Caribs

Carib family of John Gabriel Stedman

Caribs is the name for several indigenous peoples of South and Central America . Between the 8th and 15th century hiked Caribs in the areas, which later by Spanish Caribbean were called, and pressed on the Antilles Islands, the earlier immigrants Taíno .

Caribs

The name Caribs refers in a narrower sense to a people who still live on the south coast of the Caribbean in Venezuela , Guyana , Suriname and northern Brazil . The name is Kalihna or Galibi . Their language belongs to the Caribbean language family named after them, which is more widespread in northern South America .

Kalinago

The name Caribs is also used for the people that the Spaniards met on their first voyages of discovery in the Lesser Antilles , the island Caribs or Kalinago. They spoke a completely different language which, like the Taíno language, belongs to the Arawak language family . They were the result of a mixture of Arawaks and Caribs (Kalihna / Galibi), which had advanced from the mainland to the islands. Today around 3,500 of the island Caribs live on the Caribbean island of Dominica , where a reserve was set up by the British in 1903 . Their language died out around 1920.

Descendants of the Kalinago live on St. Vincent and see themselves as the Kalinago Tribe. They are descended from the Kalinago (Yellow Caribs ) who survived the deportation to Baliceaux (see below). In contrast to the Garifuna (Black Caribs), the Kalinago were allowed to return to St. Vincent, but lost their claim to their tribal land. New Sandy Bay, the main town in the northeast of the island, has only 11.6 hectares of communal land.

As in Dominica, the tribal language no longer exists. Efforts are being made to revive them, so far with no result.

Garifuna

The Garifuna , the "Black Caribs" , emerged from a mixture of island Caribs and Africans . After the lost so-called Second Caribbean War (1775/1776), 4,336 Caribs (1,779 women, 1,555 children and 1002 men) were deported by the British to the island of Baliceaux in the Grenadines in 1796, mainly in July and August . Around half of them succumbed to an epidemic in the following months, from September 1796 to January 1797, and it is still uncertain what disease it was. Almost all of the survivors, a total of 2248 Garifuna, were brought by the British from Baliceaux to the island of Roatán off the coast of Honduras in March 1797 . They still speak the Garifuna Arawak language to this day .

The mass extinction on Baliceaux, sometimes referred to as “genocide” by the Kalinago and Garifuna, escaped about 300 Garifuna who hid in the dense mountain forests of St. Vincent. They later settled in the Massarica Valley, whose main town is Greiggs, with around 1,400 inhabitants today. Many of them are Garifuna. But their language has died out. Efforts are being made to revive them, so far with no result.

Historical abuse and confusion of terms

Humboldt describes that Columbus justified the fear of the Caribbean with the alleged widespread cannibalism among the indigenous people of South America. He wanted the Caribs to be classified by the Pope as godless subhumans so that he could get permission for their enslavement. Whether the Caribs actually practiced cannibalistic practices is controversial.

literature

• Christopher Taylor: The Black Carib wars. Freedom, survival and the making of the Garifuna . Signal Books, Oxford 2012, ISBN 978-1-908493-04-0 .

Web links

Commons : Karibs  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Wiktionary: Karibe  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

• Literature about the Galibi in the catalog of the Ibero-American Institute in Berlin

Individual evidence

1. ^ Carib Indians dying out in Dominica . In: The Tribune ( Nassau ), May 10, 1973, p. 6.
2. ↑ Christopher Taylor: The Black Carib wars. Freedom, survival and the making of the Garifuna . Signal Books, Oxford 2012, p. 142.
3. ↑ Christopher Taylor: The Black Carib wars. Freedom, survival and the making of the Garifuna . Signal Books, Oxford 2012, p. 143.
4. ↑ Christopher Taylor: The Black Carib wars. Freedom, survival and the making of the Garifuna . Signal Books, Oxford 2012, p. 144.
5. ↑ Christopher Taylor: The Black Carib wars. Freedom, survival and the making of the Garifuna . Signal Books, Oxford 2012, p. 145.
6. ↑ For the methodological difficulties in attempting to state who belongs to the Garifuna and Kalinago and who does not, for the sources and the reliability of the statistical data, see Charles Gullick: The Changing Vincentian Carib Population . In: Current Developments in Anthropological Genetics , Vol. 3: Black Caribs. A Case Study in Biocultural Adaptation , edited by Michael Crawford. Plenum press, New York, 1984, ISBN 0-306-41567-4 , pp. 37-50.
7. ↑ Alexander von Humboldt: Journey into the equinoctial areas of the new continent, part 2 . Jazzybee Verlag, Altenmünster 2016, ISBN 978-3-8496-8209-5 , p. 463 .