Around 4000 years ago, Anguilla was a lush island covered in dense rain forest. It was discovered by Amerindian peoples who came by dugout canoes and rafts from South America's mainland. They called Anguilla "Malliouhana" which meant arrow-shape sea serpent and they developed villages, farms and ceremonial sites to their gods.
Evidence of these Amerindians as old as 3300 years has been found at the eastern end of Anguilla. Shell axes, conch shell drinking vessels, flint blades and stone objects from the pre-ceramic era have all been uncovered on Anguilla.
There is no record of how long this first group of Amerindians lived on the island. By the fourth century AD, Amerindians of the Saladoid culture settled in Anguilla. The Saladoids were adept farmers, pottery makers, weavers and basket makers. Many of their creations incorporated their religious beliefs.
When the English colonized Anguilla in 1650, they met no Arawaks, but their settlement was wiped out in 1656 by Amerindians from a neighboring isle who "killed almost all the men, plundered and burnt the houses, but kept the women and children as slaves". 10 years later, 300 French raided, and terrorized the people who fled into the woods.
Poor returns in cotton, which had replaced tobacco as the cash crop, created considerable hardships which increased from the 1688. By the early 1700s, the remaining, resolute settlers had turned to sugar as the principal cash crop, the island undergoing transformation from a predominantly white society of small farmers to one mostly populated by African slaves.
In 1744, 300 Anguillians, assisted by two privateers from St. Kitts, captured St.Martin , the French half of our neighboring isle. In 1745, 700 French, on two frigates under M. de la Touche, retaliated from Crosus Bay, only to be repulsed. In 1796, 400 French tried once more, destroying the main settlements at South Hill and The Valley before the British frigate HMS Lapwing sunk their two warships, Le Desius and La Vaillante, causing much loss of life.
In 1825, British pushed Anguilla into a union with St.Kitts-Nevis. On Britain's recommendation, Anguilla was allowed to send one elected representative to the St.Kitts House of Assembly. In the 1840s, the island settled down, as a society of peasant farmers, fishermen and seafarers.
After the prolonged drought and great famine in the 1890s, when many had to creep into "the woods and gather berries and herbs for food", and the depression in the 1920s and 1930s, Anguillian men flocked to Santo Domingo to work in the cane fields, some later going to Aruba and Curacao to work in the oil refineries.
Reform and limited franchise came in 1936 due to original labour disturbances brought on by the depression, the Moyne Commission being set up by Britain study social and economic conditions in the colonies, resulting in universal adult suffrage in 1952.
The Federation collapsed in 1962, and Britain's failure to form the federation of the "Little Eight" brought new constitutions, to most islands, granting Statehood in Association with Britain. The Creation of the Associated State of St.Kitts-Nevis-Anguilla , on February 1967, without the wish on the people, sparked off the Anguilla Revolution.