[4]: 79  The earliest known record of the use of the name Tabaco to refer to the island is a Spanish royal order issued in 1511.

That name was inspired by the resemblance of the shape of the island to the fat cigars smoked by the Taíno inhabitants of the Greater Antilles.

[4]: 84–85 Tobago was settled by indigenous people belonging to the Ortoiroid cultural tradition some time between 3500 and 1000 BCE.

[5] They brought with them pottery-making and agricultural traditions, and are likely to have introduced crops which included cassava, sweet potatoes, Indian yam, tannia and corn.

[4]: 60 Tobago's location made it an important point of connection between the Kalinago of the Lesser Antilles and their Kalina allies and trading partners in the Guianas and Venezuela.

[6]: 2  The Spanish settlers in Hispaniola were authorised to conduct slave raids against the island in a royal order issued in 1511.

[4]: 83 In 1628, Dutch settlers established the first European settlement in Tobago, a colony they called Nieuw Walcheren at Great Courland Bay.

[clarification needed] Over the ensuing years, the Curonians (Duchy of Courland), Dutch, English, French, Spanish and Swedish had caused Tobago to become a focal point in repeated attempts of colonization, which led to the island having changed hands 33 times, the most in Caribbean history, before the Treaty of Paris ceded it to the British in 1814.

In 1662, the Dutch brothers Adrian and Cornelius Lampsins were granted the title of Barons of Tobago, and ruled until the English captured the island in 1666.

Adrian briefly recaptured Tobago in 1673, but was killed in battle when the English, under Sir Tobias Bridge, yet again took control of the island.

[citation needed] Sugar, cotton and indigo factories sprang up and Africans were imported by the British to work as slaves.

France had abandoned the island to Britain in 1763,[9] and by 1777 Tobago was exporting great quantities of cotton, indigo, rum and sugar.

Without sugar, the islanders had to grow other crops, planting acres of limes, coconuts and cocoa and exporting their produce to Trinidad.

The local governing body, the Tobago House of Assembly (THA), employs 62% of the labor force.

[citation needed] Tobago's economy is tightly linked with Trinidad's, which is based on liquefied natural gas (LNG), petrochemicals, and steel.

Trinidad, which is further south, has no significant coral because of low salinity and high silt content, the result of its position close to the mouth of Venezuela's Orinoco River.

In 1958, Tobago was chosen by the Walt Disney Company as the setting for a film based upon the Johann Wyss novel Swiss Family Robinson.

[23][24] The script required animals, which were brought from all around the world, including eight dogs, two giant tortoises, forty monkeys, two elephants, six ostriches, four zebras, one hundred flamingos, six hyenas, two anacondas, and one tiger.

After filming, locals convinced Disney, who had intended to remove all evidence of filmmaking, to let the treehouse remain, without interior furnishing.

In 1960, the treehouse was listed for sale for $9,000, a fraction of its original cost, and became a popular attraction before the structure was destroyed by Hurricane Flora in 1963.

A local Tobago resident says, "The tree has fallen into obscurity; only a few of the older people knew of its significance.

It was designated a protected Crown reserve on 17 April 1776 after representations by Soame Jenyns, a Member of Parliament in Britain responsible for Tobago's development.

[27][28] This forested area has great biodiversity, including many species of birds (such as the dancing blue-backed manakin), mammals, frogs, (non-venomous) snakes, butterflies and other invertebrates.

Little Tobago and St Giles Island are important seabird nesting colonies, with red-billed tropicbirds, magnificent frigatebirds and Audubon's shearwaters, among others.

[33][34] Coral reefs have been damaged recently by silt and mud runoff during construction of a road along the northeast coast.