Located along the northeast coast of South America, Guyana is the only nation on the continent in which English, not Spanish, is the official language. Most of the country's 735,000 people, who are of East Indian, African, or mixed descent, live along the swampy coastal plain in the north. This tropical land was inhabited by the indigenous Arawak and Carb peoples before Dutch colonists established settlements and sugar plantations there in the early 1600s. The region received its name from the Amerindian word guiana, meaning "land of water." In the early 1800s the United Kingdom gained control of Guiana, and it remained a British colony until gaining independence in 1966. Although Guyana possesses fertile land and rich mineral deposits, it remains one of the poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere. There's a lot to discover about Guyana!