The West Indies or Caribbean Basin is a region of the North Atlantic Ocean in the Caribbean that includes the island countries and surrounding waters of three major archipelagoes: the Greater Antilles, the Lesser Antilles and the Lucayan Archipelago. 

The region is known as the area running from Florida westward along the Gulf Coast, and then south along the Mexican coast through Central America and then eastward across the northern coast of South America. 

Bermuda is also included within the region even though it is in the west-central Atlantic, due to its common cultural history created by European colonization of the region, and in most of the region by the presence of a significant group of African descent. 

Indigenous peoples were the first inhabitants of the West Indies. In 1492, Christopher Columbus became the first European to arrive at the islands, where he is believed by historians to have first stepped foot in the Bahamas. After the first of the voyages of Christopher Columbus to the Americas, Europeans began to use the term "West Indies" to distinguish the region from the East Indies of South Asia and Southeast Asia. 

In the late sixteenth century, French, English and Dutch merchants and privateers began their operations in the Caribbean Sea, attacking Spanish and Portuguese shipping and coastal areas. They often took refuge and refitted their ships in the areas the Spanish could not conquer, including the islands of the Lesser Antilles, the northern coast of South America including the mouth of the Orinoco, and the Atlantic Coast of Central America. In the Lesser Antilles they managed to establish a foothold following the colonization of St Kitts in 1624 and Barbados in 1626, and when the Sugar Revolution took off in the mid-seventeenth century, they brought in thousands of Africans to work the fields and mills as slave laborers. These Africans wrought a demographic revolution, replacing or joining with either the indigenous Caribs or the European settlers who were there as indentured servants.
What region is this about?
Which body of water is it in?
How many island chains are part of it?
What are they?
Is Bermuda included in it?
Is it physically located in the region?
Then why is it included?
Who else lives in this region?
Who lived there first?
Who was the first European there?
When?
Which place did he visit first?
Why is the region called the West Indies?
The West Indies
The West Indies
North Atlantic Ocean
e North Atlantic Ocean
three
three
the Greater Antilles, the Lesser Antilles and the Lucayan Archipelago.
 the Greater Antilles, the Lesser Antilles and the Lucayan Archipelago. 

Yes
Bermuda is also included within the region
Not really
even though it is in the west-central Atlantic
due to its common cultural history created by European colonization of the region
 due to its common cultural history created by European colonization of the region
a significant group of African descent.
a significant group of African descent. 
Indigenous peoples
Indigenous peoples
Christopher Columbus
 Christopher Columbus
1492
1492
Bahamas
Bahamas
to distinguish the region from the East Indies of South Asia and Southeast Asia.
to distinguish the region from the East Indies of South Asia and Southeast Asia.