It is with the publication of Raleigh’s book: ‘The Discovery of the Large, Rich, and Beautiful Empire of Guiana,’ at the end of the 16th century, that several exaggerated, yet also positively perceptive attitudes towards past and present Guyana, began to emerge. The first, under Raleigh’s writing, began to assert Guyana’s fame as a place of sustained startling wild and unique natural beauty; of fascinating original tribal Amerindians, and rare precious minerals. Yet, it should be said, Raleigh never set foot on what would become known as British Guiana later, in the early 19th century, and today’s Guyana. Rather he was the colleague of captains from other ships he sent in that area between the Corentyne and North-West Barima Rivers. Indeed, these captains never entered many of these rivers beyond their mouths, where Amerindian tribes answered negatively about the presence of other Europeans deep in the terrain, when in fact records show that many of the first legendary tough Flemish/Dutch pioneers of Guyana, men like Joost Van der Hoog, Jan de Moor, Pieter Van Rhee, Hendrickzoon, Matheson, Vyphuis, and later Groenwegen, were already living deep inside Guyana and acquainted with the Native Indians, who protected their presence from others. It is recorded that the up-river harbour/settlement of Amenadina, the original name of the Bartica region of today, had huge three-mast Netherlander ships anchored and was a transient trading port for all sorts of European utensils, which made it a fascinating attraction to the local Amerindians.

LANGUAGE AND HISTORY
It is interesting that the issue of language plays an important part in preserving original cultural concepts which link Guyana to its continental South American geographic reality. For example, the early spelling of Guayana, which denotes the Spanish area of the region, was even used after British colonization of Guyana on maps in books penned by Robert Schomburgk, who was appointed by the British Crown to report on the natural value of the territory they had taken over in the early 19th century from its Dutch founders. This word; ‘Guayana,’ preserved the link of today’s Guyana to its Latin American continental neighbours, such as Uruguay and Paraguay, where ‘Guay’ is the suffix, rather than the prefix. The prevalence of the half-title ‘Guay,’ originates from a valuable and highly influential Native Indian tribe known as the Warraus, but whose original name is really Guarau, or Guaranos, whose coastal villages stretched around the coasts of Venezuela, Guyana, Suriname, French Guiana, Brazil, Uruguay and inland Paraguay. Their shared native language in colonial times was the second most necessary and used language after Spanish and Portuguese by ancient travellers in these regions. The choice of the name ‘Guyana’ which separates it from Latin American nations and relations, perhaps also expressed a desire to see Anglo-Guyana as distinct from other continental nations which often tended toward political despotism and dictatorship.

GUYANA”S EVOLUTION
Is such information about a tribal indigenous South American-Guyanese people relevant to the other five human ethnicities of today’s Guyana, ie: Africans, East Indians, Chinese, European, those of mixed race stock, and I should add, the other Amerindian tribes of Guyana today. Yes it is, if all the inhabitants of Guyana understand and accept that a concept of national identity should claim for itself human roots that exist in the geography they inhabit at present, however ‘primitive’, pre-historic, pre-Westernised, or pre-modern those roots. One of the possibilities non-fiction writing presents, is the suggestion, nurturing, and development of nationality rooted in the achievements of a territory’s ‘First Peoples’. Such a concept of nationality has rarely been installed in the consciousness of Guyanese via historical writings, since the written values of various European travellers and historians (and later even their local literary imitators), tended to see their present location in the ‘New World’ of the Americas, as little more than a cruel historical aberration, a mistake, dependent upon native genocide, African slave labour, Indentured servitude, and subsequent diverse ethnic insularities with no vision of any other evolving local culture, except the ethnic ones brought by them from across the ocean in the ‘Old World,’ related to, and preserved through race and religion.

HISTORY’S POSITIVE LEGACY
The second attitude inherent in Raleigh’s written account of his adventure in Guiana, injected his book with two useful values for future Guyanese; First is the example of ‘free will’, which both Raleigh and all the other sea-faring European adventurer-pioneers, especially the Netherlanders, exercised in their daring voyages and settlements in Guiana; second, is Raleigh’s recognition of various Native Indian tribes he encountered, as Guyanese, the human and national root of all those who were to follow, since at that time there were no numerous Africans, East Indians, Chinese, Europeans, or mixed descendants of any of these races as yet. Does that mean that the only true Guyanese remain Native Amerindians? Not at all; since time and history do not stagnate in affecting planet earth. On the other hand, Raleigh’s flattery to his Queen, his jealousy of Spanish conquistadors and the gold they confiscated, his zealous, almost military excursions into Spanish territory which almost ended the much fostered peace between Spain and England, led to his eventual demise by the hands of his English crown. And yet his personal history offers another vital, if obscure truth about Guyana’s historical foundation; In 1577 he left to fight for the Netherlands freedom from Spanish dominion (under Charles the Bold), and the great coincidence is that the man whose command he fought under was Prince William the 1st, of the Netherlands House of Orange. The actual original founder of what would become historical Guyana in the late 16th century.