The villages of Johi and Biloku were populated by the Essequibo Carib 
Indians, and date to before European contact, although they were 
transformed by contact with the Dutch.  The small settlements had 
enormous difficulty in dealing with a yellow fever outbreak in the 
early 1920s, and they are today abandoned.

During the 1969 incursion, the Venezuelan army used Biloku as a minor 
staging point for its operations throughout the western Upper Essequibo 
basin.