Aruba is a melting pot of more than 90 different nationalities with strong European, Latin and Native American influences so we thought it would be fun to test the DNA of our family. The results were interesting and quite surprising.

Our grandmothers and grandfathers always spoke about this “aunt” or that “uncle” sleeping in houses with sand floors and smoking cigarettes with the flame inside of their mouth but we never really considered ourselves as having a Native American ancestry. So when the largest percentage of DNA (34%) came back as Native American we realized Aruba’s original inhabitants played a larger role in forming our family than we originally thought! Aruba's first inhabitants are thought to have been Caquetío Amerindians from the Arawak tribe of Venezuela who came to Aruba to escape threats from the Carib Indians in South America.

The next largest percentage (30%) came from Western Europe (i.e. Holland) which makes sense because of Aruba’s Dutch connection. But then add 10% from Ireland, 9% from Scandinavia, 6% from the African country of Mali, 3% each from Spain and Great Britain and a bit from Eastern Europe, Asia and Russia, we realized our family truly reflects the island’s rich and diverse heritage.

The debate now takes us a step further, to discover which side of the family was most closely tied to the island’s Native American people. Does this influence come from our father’s side, the Van Der Linden side, who we thought with a name like Van Der Linden, must be more closely tied to Holland, or from our mother’s side, the Bareño side, who we thought must be tied to Spain. At the writing of this blog we are waiting on the results but we hope to settle the debate shortly.

Like Aruba, our ancestry continues to evolve, in our case with an American twist bringing more Western European and Irish influences plus a touch from Italy and Greece. We will see what future generations bring to the party but one thing is for sure, we will forever be tied to Aruba and to our homestead, the Old Aloe House Aruba!

Update - Feb. 19, 2019 - the debate has been settled. It turns out that our Indian heritage comes from our mother’s side of the family! It was also interesting to find out that this heritage came from both Native American Indians from North America and from Andean Indians, in other words, Indians who came up from the Andes mountain range of South America.