Bruuman extinct native human population is still a mysterious subject, due both to the scarcity of archeological findings and the lack of recent systematic studies. The Bruuman regime exploit frequently the figure of the native as a victim of the colonists’ cruelty, but has avoided any further investigation as it deems them a threat to its view of a monolithic Afro-Bruuman identity. Thus, ironically most of the available material come from studies and excavations conducted by the former white colonists.

The first humans arrived in Bruuma around 6,000 BC, probably using Jimson Weed Island as a stepping-stone. They belonged to the same ethnic group of the natives of Puerto Pollo, although it is not clear if they arrived from there or they were both terminal ends of a mainland migration.  In the following centuries they spread all over the island, settling primarily in the coastal plains. Jimson Weed Island and Revolution Island were sparsely populated, while Juju Island hosted a sanctuary but was never permanently settled, allegedly because it was believed inhabited by evil spirits.

 

The natives’ primal political entity was the tribe, defined by the belonging to a particular shamanistic tradition. Each tribe was then divided in patrilineal clans that usually accounted for the population of a single village. Villages were built in clearings, natural or artificial, and were composed of a dozen or more long huts built with wood and dried palm leaf. Each extended family occupied one hut, and other were used as communal places. Some villages, especially those in tribal border zone, were surrounded with a wooden palisade. Activities were mostly communal, from child care and meal cooking to construction and hunting.  When the natives arrived, they were hunter-gatherer, but at the times the colonists arrived most tribes also practiced small-scale agriculture in fields near the village, where they grow cassava and other vegetables. Game, mostly small animals, and fish remained the main source of protein intake.

 

Unlike in Puerto Pollo, political and religious authorities were undivided: the shamans held power. They were structured as a brotherhood and employed a secret language to communicate between each other. The position of shaman was not hereditary, but grooming of the apprentices began early in their youth.

In each tribe, they formed a council which frequently met to take collective decisions; the most revered one – usually also the oldest - acted as the supreme authority. These supreme shamans formed a conclave who met regularly on Mount Laveau, although it’s not exactly known on which time span – estimates vary from one to fifty years! 

 

The native religion was animistic, centered on a dualistic belief: on one side, there were natural spirits, those of the elements, of the weather, of the creatures of the forests. They were considered neutral forces, to be pleased when necessary but otherwise better left alone. On the other sides, there were supernatural spirits akin to demons, being of great powers and free will, with whom the shamans bargained, offering sacrifices in exchange for powers and favors. Small sacrifices were paid with game, objects or blood, but major ones were always human and often involved cannibalism.

 

Sacrifices were in fact the primary motives of conflict between tribes. Fighting were conducted in a ritualistic fashion, following a well-defined code and ended when the winners took enough victims and bodies, either by force or agreement. These wars were not common but recurring, usually taking place once a decade.

Archeological finding however suggests that before the arrival of the colonists they were taking places almost annually. Two explanations, not mutually exclusive, have been proposed:

Thus, the increase in population might have helped the outbreaks, while the increased contacts due to fighting and victims’ exchange might have sped them up.

 

When the colonists invaded Bruuma in 1666, they easily defeated the natives, already strained by illness and war and impeded by their ritualistic ways of conducting warfare.  After winning decisively some open battles during the first year, they successfully quelled resistance in the following decade.

The invaders enslaved the natives to work in mines and plantations, even raiding those villages in the interior where they still didn’t have control; thousands died of illness, forced labor and starvation and many others took their own life.  The colonists estimated that there were 20,000 natives in Bruuma in 1666, a figure considered accurate by historians. According to the censuses, in just a quarter of century their number was reduced to 1,150, plummeting then to a mere 75 in 1711.

 

The last confirmed sighting of a Bruuman native dates to 1721. He was an old shaman named Castro, who by then was reduced to beg in the streets. One day, according to the local folklore, he felt death was approaching. He told the black slaves he befriended that he would go back to the Mountain and launch his last curse against the colonists who killed his people, the gods who abandoned them and the island itself.

He specified that the curse would be very powerful, but would take many generations to unfold. He accepted some food for the travel and ventured outside the city, directed toward Mount Laveau: nobody saw him ever since.