ABSTRACT
The West Indies, quite naturally, present their own particular problems historically and socially; historically, because they have experienced the invasion and regimes of a number of European countries; socially, because each island or group of islands, as well as countries on the mainland such as British Honduras and Guyana, have all their own individual background as well as a more general one. Statistics on religion are notoriously inaccurate and misleading, but there have been some interesting figures published for Jamaica as a result of a census held in 1943 and another in 1960. The aboriginal element of the Caribbean islands was, in the Greater Antilles, made up mostly of the Arawak Indians, who, it is believed, in all probability reached their new habitat from South America. The Amerindian Arawaks, however, were not particularly impressed by the new religion preached to them, since they associated it very closely with the heavy work they were forced to do for their conquerors.
