Carib people

Carib family (by John Gabriel Stedman)
Drawing of a Carib woman

Carib, Island Carib, or Kalinago people, after whom the Caribbean Sea was named, are a group of people who live in the Lesser Antilles islands. They are an Amerindian people whose origins lie in the southern West Indies and the northern coast of South America.

The people spoke either a Carib language or a pidgin, but the Caribs' regular raids on other groups resulted in so many female Arawak captives that it was not uncommon for the women to speak Kalhíphona, a Maipurean language (Arawakan). In the southern Caribbean, they co-existed with a related Cariban-speaking group, the Galibi. They lived in separate villages in Grenada, Tobago, and Dominica.

Contents

History

The Caribs are believed to have migrated from the Orinoco River area in South America to settle in the Caribbean islands about 1200 CE, according to carbon dating. Over the century leading up to Columbus' arrival in the Caribbean archipelago in 1492, the Caribs mostly displaced, by warfare, extermination and assimilation, the Maipurean-speaking Tainos, who settled the island chains earlier in history.[1]

The Carib islanders traded with the Eastern Taíno of the Caribbean Islands. The Caribs produced the silver which Ponce de Leon found in Taino communities. None of the insular Amerindians mined for gold, but obtained it by trade from the mainland. The Caribs were skilled boatbuilders and sailors. They appeared to have owed their dominance in the Caribbean basin to their mastery of warfare.

The Caribs were displaced by the Europeans with a great loss of life; most fatalities resulting from Eurasian infectious diseases to which they had no immunity, as well as warfare. Others were assimilated during the colonial period; a few retained areas such as in Dominica. Small populations survive, specifically in the Carib Territory in northeast Dominica.

The Black Caribs (later known as Garifuna) of St. Vincent were descended from group of enslaved Africans who were marooned from shipwrecks of slave ships, as well as slaves who escaped here. They intermarried with the Carib and formed the last native culture to resist the British. It was not until 1795 that British colonists transported the Black Carib to Roatan Island, off Honduras. Their descendants continue to live there today and are known as the Garifuna ethnic group. Carib resistance delayed the settlement of Dominica by Europeans, and the Carib communities that remained in St. Vincent and Dominica retained a degree of autonomy well into the 19th century.

As the last known speakers of Island Carib died in the 1920s, the language is considered extinct.

People

Because of Dominica's rugged area, Caribs were able to hide from European forces. The island's east coast includes a 3,700-acre (15 km2) territory known as the Carib Territory that was granted to the people by the British Crown in 1903. There are only 3000 Caribs remaining. They elect their own chief. In July 2003, Caribs observed 100 Years of Territory. In July 2004, Charles Williams was elected as Carib Chief[2], who was succeeded by Chief Garnette Joseph. It is said that they are the only remaining full-blood native Carib people, although some have intermarried with the non-Carib Dominican population.

Several hundred ethnic Carib descendants live in Trinidad, as well as in St. Vincent, the size of which is not known. Some ethnic Carib communities remain on the South American mainland, in countries such as Venezuela, Colombia, Brazil, French Guiana, Guyana and Suriname. The sizes of these communities differ.

Religion

The Carib are believed to have been polytheists. As the Spanish began to colonize the Caribbean area, they wanted to convert the natives to Catholicism.

The Kalingo religion practiced by the Carib had elements similar to the ancestor worship of the Taino. They believed in an evil spirit called Maybouya, who had to be placated for an individual to avoid harm. The chief function of their shamans, called buyeis, was to heal the sick with herbs and to cast spells (piai) which would keep Maybouya at bay. The buyeis were very important and underwent special training instead of becoming warriors. As they were held to be the only people who could avert evil, they were treated with great respect. Their ceremonies were accompanied with sacrifices. As with the Arawaks and other Native Americans, the Carib smoked tobacco in the rituals of their religion.

Patriarchy

Early Carib culture was patriarchal. Women carried out the important domestic duties of rearing young children, processing and producing food and clothing, and cultivating the land for farming, including sowing and harvesting. In the 17th century, Europeans documented the women, with their children, living in separate houses from men, a custom recorded among other South American tribes.

The women were highly revered and held substantial socio-political power. Island Carib society was reputedly more socially egalitarian than Taíno society. Although there were village chiefs and war leaders, there were no large states or multi-tiered aristocracy. The local self-government unit may have been the longhouse dwellings populated by men or women, typically run by one or more chieftains reporting to an island council.

Cannibalism

The Carib word karibna meant "person". It became the origin of the English "cannibal". Although among the Carib, it was apparently associated with rituals related to the eating of war enemies, some Europeans believed the Carib practiced general cannibalism.

Instances of cannibalism were noted as a feature of war rituals: the limbs of victims may have been taken home as trophies. The Kalinago would chew and spit out one mouthful of flesh of a very brave warrior, so that he could take on his bravery; but there was no evidence that they ate humans to satisfy hunger.

The Kalinago had a tradition of keeping bones of their ancestors in their houses. Missionaries such as Père Jean Baptiste Labat and Cesar de Rochefort described the practice as part of a belief that the ancestral spirits would always look after the bones and protect their descendants.

When Columbus landed at Guadeloupe and came across a Carib village, his forces found evidence of cannibalism everywhere. The stench of deteriorating bodies horrified Columbus's men. He described "Limbs of human bodies hung up in houses as if curing for provisions",and "body parts were roasting before the fire." In his journal Columbus described acts of cannibalism. While Columbus was there, three young Carib slaves who had been castrated, fled to him and sought shelter, claiming they were soon to be eaten.

Italian explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano was killed and said to be eaten by Carib natives on what is now Guadeloupe in 1528, during his third voyage to North America, after exploring Florida, The Bahamas and the Lesser Antilles.

Historians have described the cannibalism as related to war rituals. But, Columbus and his people did not understand what they were seeing, and they were shocked at what they understood to be cannibalism. In 1503, Queen Isabella ruled that only people who were better off under slavery (a definition which explicitly included cannibals) could legally be taken as slaves. This provided Spaniards an incentive and legalistic pretext for identifying various Amerindian groups as cannibals to enslave them and take their lands away.

To this day, the Kalinago people fight against what they regard as a misconception about their ancestors. The film Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest was criticised by the National Garifuna Council for portraying the Carib people as cannibals.

See also

References

  1. ↑ Sweeney, James L. (2007). "Caribs, Maroons, Jacobins, Brigands, and Sugar Barons: The Last Stand of the Black Caribs on St. Vincent", African Diaspora Archaeology Network, March 2007, retrieved 26 April 2007
  2. ↑ "The Carib Indians"

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