Caribbean People

Relations with Europeans

When Christophe Colomb discovers the island of Cuba in 1492, it is already populated by more than 120.000 autochtones. They are various tribes, but the Taïnos and the Karibs (Caribes) dominate of number. Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar and its men launches out in the conquest and the plundering of the territory. They adapt the grounds, reduce Karibs in slavery and monopolize the gold of those. In less than ten years, of 1511 with 1520 the indigenous population is practically decimated, resisting badly the new diseases and the work imposed by the Spanish Conquistador.

The Caribbean and Arawaks

It was until very recently, usually allowed that the arawaks had been exterminated by the Caribbean. However it seems that this assertion is not also any more clearly accepted.

Thesis of the absence of extermination

The economic issues of the Colonisation explain mainly why was forged a largely legendary history where populations " caraïbes" , term which could come from the Spanish and having given place to our word cannibal, wild man-eaters, would have exterminated hypothetical peaceful populations arawaks removing and reducing in slavery their wives.

Many recent work tends to show that this diagram was often evoked in the history to justify the extermination of a population by another. It is to some extent about a self-justification: admittedly Europeans exterminated the " caraïbes" , but it is only one just reward of the things, these populations being supposed to have made in the same way with their predecessors.

This diagram is found always more or less developed by the chroniclers and perdure until in very serious recent works and is still taught in the schools. It is not place to go here into the details of the discussion of these problems. It should simply be noticed that the Polysémie arawaks terms and the Caribbean, recovering as well Amazonian populations, linguistic families and the protagonists of the " pseudo" drama of the chroniclers, makes that the archeologists avoid employing them to confine itself with the purely archaeological characterizations of the various cultures highlighted in the Antilles.

Thesis of the extermination

This thesis, a long time unquestioned, defines two people: the Arawaks and the the Caribbean. The first which constitute a seafaring nation define a not very quarrelsome company and which bequeathed us many very worked potteries. The seconds constitute people with the larger warlike aptitudes which by an expansion policy exterminated the people arawaks, by consuming the flesh of overcome and fascinating the commes women the widows of the latter. In the absence of written tradition, it is impossible to trust with other sources that those of the first explorer-colonists. The elements pleading in favor of this thesis are:

Existence of two languages, one spoken by the women and considered 100% arawak and that of the men, mixes the Caribbean one and of arawak.
Existence proven of two different cultural families (tradition of very different potteries).
Account of the first colonists and in particular the Anonymous of Carpentras which delivers one of the most credible accounts on the Lesser Antilles before the installation of the colonial powers.

Intermediate thesis

If the existence of two " peuples" differentiated can to be completely accepted (the concepts of the Caribbean and arawaks are polysemous terms according to the interlocutor which employs them), the archaeological vestiges highlight, in particular by the style of the archaeological potteries at least three styles whose two last could be applied under the arawaks terms and the Caribbean. The human history being rich in episodes of elimination of people by others, it is possible that a wave could drive out the preceding one. However, this elimination could very well be made in a cultural way without warlike preponderance.

The linguistic difference man-women can be also explained by thorough contacts of the male race with other tribes. Thus the linguistic hybrid spoken by the men (grammatical structure arawak with Caribbean vocabulary) could be connected with a Sabir.

Finally it is certain that the warlike traditions combined with the ritual anthropophagy practiced by the the Caribbean contributed has to create the image of the wild clean to promote the founded good of colonization.

See too

Internal bond

Kali' Na

External bonds

Text of a conference of Benoit BERARD (University of the Antilles and Guyana)
Site of the Museum of Fort de France

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