The America Christopher Columbus discovered on October 12, 1492 was an island in what is today the Bahamas.

The Commonwealth of the Bahamas is today's "History of" country. It was an island that was inhabited by the Lucayans, who called it Guanahani. The Lucayans had canoed over to the Bahama islands between 500 and 800 A.D.

The Bahamas held little of interest to the Spanish other than as a source of slave labor. Nearly the entire population of Lucayans (almost 40,000 people total) were deported over the next 30 years. When the Spanish decided to evacuate the remaining Lucayans to Hispaniola in 1520, they could find only eleven in all of the Bahamas. The islands remained abandoned and depopulated for 130 years afterwards....

English settlers began arriving in 1648. The first, who called themselves Eleutherians, were farmers who didn't do too well. The New Providence settlement, begun in 1666 "made their living from the sea, salvaging (mainly Spanish) wrecks, making salt, and taking fish, turtles, conchs and ambergris."

Conflicts with the Spanish ensued over this salvaging of Spanish wrecks, and in 1685, the Spanish burned down New Providence and Eleuthera and these places were "largely abandoned." Five years later, the place was full of English privateers, who — after England made peace with France — became pirates. Then — if I'm reading this right — the pirates got back to being privateers or back again to being pirates depending on whether there was there was a war going on.

If you want to investigate the privateer/pirate distinction, you can look here.

Nowadays, the Bahamas seems like a nice place to go for vacation, and it looks like the tourists like the pirate-related attractions, like the Pirates of Nassau Museum, which invites you to "plunder" its gift shop.