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Because of the island's rugged terrain, Saba was probably not heavily settled in pre-Columbian times. However, artefacts uncovered in the Spring Bay area indicate the existence of a small Arawak settlement at that site about 1300 years ago. During his second trip to the New World in 1493, Christopher Columbus became the first European to sight Saba. The Dutch laid claim to the island in 1632 and sent a party of colonists from Sint Eustatius in 1640 to form a permanent settlement. These early colonists originally lived at Middle Island and Mary's Point, where a few cisterns and stone walls can still be found, but soon moved to The Bottom, which remains the administrative centre of the island.
As the steep topography precluded large-scale plantations, colonial-era slavery was quite limited on Saba. Those colonists who did own slaves generally had only a few and often worked side by side with them in the fields, resulting in a more integrated society than on larger Dutch islands.
Until the 1940s, Saba's villages were connected solely by footpaths. When Dutch engineers told residents the island's steep terrain prohibited road building, they spent the next 20 years building one themselves. Although Hurricane Georges rolled directly over the island in 1998, no one was killed and damage was relatively light.
Saba was part of the Netherlands Antilles until 2005, when the five islands (Saba, Sint Eustatius, Curaçao, Bonaire and Sint Maarten) met on the Jesurun Referendum to decide the possible disintegration of the Netherlands Antilles. Saba voted overwhelmingly to become directly administered by the Netherlands. As a result, Bonaire, Saba and St Eustatius will from 2007 have a similar status to Dutch municipalities, including the right to vote in elections.
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