IF YOU LOOK at a map of the Caribbean Sea you will see an arc of islands starting from Cuba in the northwest, extending generally east and south through Hispaniola (Haiti and Dominican Republic), then Puerto Rico, then a bunch of islands called the Leeward Islands, most of which are part of the East Caribbean States group, then onward through the Windward Islands, some participating in the ECS, some economically on their own, then a couple more islands, then it’s South America.
The two southernmost islands are the subject of this article. Trinidad, area about 2000 square miles, has a salient on its southwestern corner that is only 6.8 miles from the coast of Venezuela. During the last Ice Age, when sea levels were lower, it was connected. Tobago, a bit north and east, is about a twentieth the size. The two of them, with a few other tiny bits, make one nation that calls itself The Republic of Trinidad and Tobago.
Geographers divide the islands of the Caribbean into various groups, then they develop differences of opinion about which islands are in which group. There is an opinion that Trinidad and Tobago are the southernmost of the Windward Island group. I only bring this up because of the French colonial coins I’ll mention later.
We numismatists will encounter Caribbean coins from Trinidad, the town in Cuba, the grid counter-marks on late 18th century Spanish colonial coins. That’s the other Trinidad, not the subject of this article.
People came to Trinidad from mainland South America around 7,000 years ago. The oldest archeo-logical remains in the Caribbean have been found on Trinidad. Columbus landed there on his third voyage, in 1498, and named it Isla de la Trinidad. It is written that he saw Tobago but didn’t go there.
