Caribbean

Indigenous People

Until the end of the fifteenth century, three different people lived in the Caribbean: the Ciboneys, the Taino Arawaks, and the Karibs. It is to the latter that the region owes its name. Estimates concerning the size of the original population vary from 300,000 to 6,000,000. The Arawaks were located primarily in the Greater Antilles, the Bahamas, and some of the Lesser Antilles islands; the Karibs lived in the Lesser Antilles; the Ciboneys had settled in the western part of Cuba and Haiti. The word Antilles itself derives from “Antillia,” the name of an imaginary island that started appearing on maps as early as 1424.

The Arrival of Europeans

The first Europeans, led by Christopher Columbus, set foot in the Caribbean on October 12, 1492, in the Bahamas, on the island of Guanahani, known today as San Salvador. Columbus was then searching for a new route to Asia and incorrectly believed that he had reached its western shores. This mistake led him to call the Caribbean islands the “West Indies,” a name that is still commonly used. Columbus's first voyage was followed by many, and each time he stumbled upon an island, he claimed it as a Spanish possession and renamed it accordingly. Thus, original indigenous names were replaced by Europeans ones, such as Karukera losing its Karib name of “the island with beautiful waters” to become Guadeloupe and Ayiti becoming Hispaniola (literally, “Little Spain”).

The arrival of the Europeans in the Caribbean opened an era of great physical and social violence. It was particularly disastrous for the indigenous people, and almost all of them disappeared in a short period of time. The reasons for their elimination are multiple and range from warfare, European diseases, slavery and overwork to brutal murder and unspeakable cruelties. The Karibs in particular put up a fierce resistance against European assaults, and this caused them to be described by Eurocentric historians as “warlike” and dangerous, with some even tracing the root of the word cannibal to their name, Karib. Of course, the Karibs were simply and quite naturally defending themselves. Many, less biased, historians recognize that the extermination of these indigenous people represents one of the largest genocides of modern history. Today, only in Dominica has a small community of [Page 179]Karibs managed to survive on a reservation where they weave baskets for tourist consumption.

...