Jamaica was once inhabitated by the indigenous Arawak and Taino people, who were believed to have settled Jamaica sometime between 4000 and 1000 BC. The island was discovered by Christopher Columbus in 1494, at which point some 200 villages were known to be under the rule of several native chiefs known as caciques. The island was colonized by the Spanish shortly there after, with the first settlement Sevilla built in 1509, and the capital established in Spanish Town, at the time called St. Jago de la Vega. The capital, however, was moved to St. Catherine in 1536, and from then on, Jamaica underwent steady colonization by the Europeans. By the 1600s, the island had fallen to the British, who forcibly evicted the Spanish who owned the island.