The History of the Caribs
- Before A.D. 1000, the Caribs lived along the Orinoco River and in the Amazon Basin. They were adversaries of the Arawak Indians and pursued them up the Orinoco and onto the Lesser Antilles. The Caribs and Arawaks shared many traditions, including the practice of conuco agriculture. This involves planting root cuttings of various plants, especially cassava, into mounds. It was particularly suited to the soil of the Caribbean islands they inhabited.
The Caribs sometimes took Arawak women captured in raids for their wives, explaining why early European explorers described the men and women as speaking different languages. - Women were responsible for agricultural and domestic duties, while the men hunted and fished. The men and women lived in separate communal huts. It was not uncommon for men to have multiple wives. A chief led the people, a practice maintained to this day. The chief is elected and assisted in decision-making by an elected council.
The first Europeans who encountered the Caribs became convinced they were cannibals, adding to their fearsome reputation. The Spaniards called them Caribes, which means cannibals in Spanish. The Caribs call themselves Kalinago. The Caribs did eat human flesh, but only as part of a spiritual ritual to imbue themselves with the characteristics of the bravest fallen enemy warriors. - On Christopher Columbus' second voyage to the Caribbean, in 1493, a Spanish exploring party killed a small group of Caribs on the island of St. Martin. A Spanish attempt to colonize Trinidad in 1530 was rebuffed by the Caribs, and the Spanish largely ignored the Lesser Antilles after that.
In 1605, the Caribs successfully defended St. Lucia from English colonization. However, the English found the Caribs on St. Kitts less hostile and established their first successful colony there in 1624. - The Caribs turned back French attempts to colonize St. Lucia and Dominica in the early 1600s, but the French succeeded in establishing a permanent colony on St. Lucia in 1650.
Although the Caribs were often successful in battle, they had no defense against the diseases Europeans introduced to the Caribbean. Smallpox, measles, typhus, yellow fever, malaria, and tuberculosis killed hundreds of thousands of Arawaks and Caribs. The Arawaks were effectively eliminated as a separate people. - The French and English eventually succeeded in establishing permanent colonies in Dominica in the mid-1700s. The Caribs maintained their identity, however, leading in 1903 to the establishment of an autonomous 3,700-acre territory for them on the island. As of 2009, about 3,500 to 4,000 Caribs were living on the reserve.
Scattered smaller communities of Carib descendants live on other Caribbean islands, most notably St. Vincent. Those on St. Vincent call themselves Garinagu and are of mixed African-Carib ancestry.