Editing Turks and Caicos Islands (section)

===European arrival===
It is unknown precisely who the first European to sight the islands was. Some sources state that [[Christopher Columbus]] saw the islands on his voyage to the Americas in 1492.<ref name="britannica.com"/> However, other sources state that it is more likely that [[Spanish Empire|Spanish]] conquistador [[Juan Ponce de León]] was the first European in Turks and Caicos, in 1512.<ref name=MinorityRightsGroup/> In either case, by 1512 the Spanish had begun capturing the Taíno and Lucayans as labourers in the ''[[encomienda]]'' system to replace the largely depleted native population of Hispaniola.<ref>{{cite thesis |last=Stone |first=Erin Woodruff |date=May 2014 |title=Indian Harvest: The Rise of the Indigenous Slave Trade and Diaspora from Española to the Circum-Caribbean, 1492-1542 |type=PhD |publisher=Vanderbilt University |hdl=1803/10737 |oclc=873593348 |url=http://hdl.handle.net/1803/10737 |access-date=2022-03-04 |archive-date=15 January 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230115081544/https://ir.vanderbilt.edu/handle/1803/10737 |url-status=live }}</ref>{{rp|pp=92–99}}<ref>{{cite book |last=Sauer |first=Carl Ortwin |author-link=Carl O. Sauer |year=1966 |title=The Early Spanish Main |url=https://archive.org/details/earlyspanishmain00saue_0 |url-access=registration |location=Berkeley & Los Angeles |publisher=University of California Press |lccn=66015004 |oclc=485687 |access-date=2022-03-05 |via=the Internet Archive}}</ref>{{rp|pp=159–160, 191}} As a result of this, and the introduction of diseases to which the native people had no immunity, the southern Bahama Islands and the Turks and Caicos Islands were completely depopulated by about 1513, and remained so until the 17th century.<ref>{{cite book |last=Albury |first=Paul |year=1975 |title=The Story of the Bahamas |url=https://archive.org/details/storyofbahamas0000albu |url-access=registration |publisher=Macmillan Caribbean |isbn=9780333171318 |access-date=2022-03-05 |via=the Internet Archive}}</ref>{{rp|pp=34–37}}<ref>{{cite book |last=Craton |first=Michael |year=1986 |title=A History of the Bahamas |url=https://archive.org/details/historyofbahamas0000crat |url-access=registration |edition=3rd |location=Waterloo, ON |publisher=San Salvador Press |isbn=9780969256809 |access-date=2022-03-05 |via=the Internet Archive}}</ref>{{rp|pp=37–39}}<ref>William F. Keegan (1992). ''The People Who Discovered Columbus: The Prehistory of the Bahamas''. University Press of Florida. {{ISBN|0-8130-1137-X}} pp. 25, 48–62, 86, 170–173, 212–213, 220–223</ref>{{page range too broad|date=March 2022}}