Editing Nevis (section)

===Amerindians===
[[File:Nevis FrenchSlavetrade.jpg|thumb|upright=1|Illustration of French [[Atlantic slave trade|slave trade]] from the 1876 book ''The 18th century: Its Institutions, Customs, and Costumes: France, 1700–1789'']]
Nevis had been settled for more than two thousand years by [[Amerindian peoples]] prior to having been sighted by Columbus in 1493.<ref>See for example [http://www.arch.soton.ac.uk/Projects/default.asp?ProjectID=12 Nevis Heritage excavation reports, 2000–2002] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060708150627/http://www.arch.soton.ac.uk/Projects/default.asp?ProjectID=12 |date=8 July 2006 }}, Department of Archaeology, University of Southampton. Retrieved 8 August 2006.</ref> The indigenous people of Nevis during these periods belonged to the Leeward Island Amerindian groups popularly referred to as [[Arawaks]] and [[Island Caribs|Kalinago]], a complex mosaic of ethnic groups with similar culture and language.<ref name="Wilson">Wilson, Samuel (1990). "The Prehistoric Settlement Pattern of Nevis, West Indies". ''Journal of Field Archaeology'', Vol. 16, No. 4 (Winter 1989), p. 427-450.</ref> Dominican anthropologist Lennox Honychurch traces the European use of the term "Carib" to refer to the Leeward Island aborigines to Columbus, who picked it up from the [[Taínos]] on [[Hispaniola]]. It was not a name the Kalinago called themselves.<ref name="Honychurch">Honychurch, Lennox (1997). "Crossroads in the Caribbean: A Site of Encounter and Exchange on Dominica". ''World Archaeology'' Vol. 28(3): 291–304.</ref> "Carib Indians" was the generic name used for all groups believed involved in cannibalistic war rituals, more particularly, the consumption of parts of a killed enemy's body.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Nevis History |url=https://nevisisland.com/nevis-history/ |access-date=2024-03-16 |website=Nevis Tourism Authority |language=en |archive-date=26 July 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230726032757/https://nevisisland.com/nevis-history/ |url-status=live }}</ref>

The Amerindian name for Nevis was ''Oualie'', land of beautiful waters. The structure of the Kalinago language has been linguistically identified as [[Arawakan languages|Arawakan]].<ref name="Honychurch" />