 Smaller numbers of slaves, many of African birth, were also captured from the Spanish and Portuguese and sold in Bermuda, and smaller numbers deliberately imported.Few of the British West Indian traditions we know today had evolved at that point as most of the British West Indian islands postdate Bermuda's settlement, and most of the culture of the Afro-Hispanic and African immigrants of that century, like that of the Native American and Irish sent to Bermuda under similar conditions, has been lost.Over time, the blacks, Native Americans, Irish and some of the English merged to form a single demographic, originally referred to as "coloured" (leaving Bermuda divided into two subgroups, with those presumed to be of entirely European heritage defined as "white").