"Rumor of Cannibals"
 
by Dave D. Davis
 
in "Archaeology" (January/February 1992, p. 49)
 
     One autumn morning in 1492, Christopher Columbus stood on a
beach on Hispaniola, conversing with local Taino inhabitants. 
The Admiral's hosts informed him that small islands to the
southeast (today's Lesser Antilles) were occupied by Caniba, or
Canima (later Hispanicized to Caribes, and eventually Anglicized
to Caribs).  The Taino word Caniba means "manioc people" or
"people of the manioc clan" and is the root word of both
Caribbean and cannibal.  But, according to the Taino, these
Caniba were warlike eaters of human flesh who periodically raided
the peaceful folk of the larger islands.  Caribs were also
associated with the underworld in the local mythology.  The
Admiral recorded other hearsay about these people.  On November
4, 1492, in Cuba, he had learned that Caniba "had but one eye and
the faces of dogs."
     Subsequent voyages and colonization of the West Indies
revealed that the islands were populated by nothing more
fantastic than two-legged, two-eyed, non-tailed Native Americans. 
Reviewing early documents related to the Island Caribs,
anthropologist Robert Myers found a pattern of low-scale raiding
and slave-taking throughout the Windward Islands, but there was
no reliable evidence to support their reputation as cannibals. 
But the report of the ferocious Caniba continued to influence
Spanish policy.
     It would seem that stories of Carib ferocity helped to
resolve a conflict between the clergy's desire to save souls and
Spanish colonists' need for labor.  A 1511 edict defined as
Caribs any Indians who were hostile to Europeans, behaved
violently, or consumed human flesh.  Caribs, the edict concluded,
were without souls, and so were suitable subjects for the slave
trade.
     Who were the inhabitants of the Lesser Antilles, the so-
called Island Caribs?  Father Raymond Breton, who spent several
years among them during the second quarter of the seventeenth
century, reported that the Island Caribs, who called themselves
the Kalinago, employed both "men's" and "women's" languages. 
Breton's informants said this dual language system was the result
of an invasion of the Lesser Antilles by Carib-speaking men from
South America who took possession of the islands through raids
upon their inhabitants, who spoke Arawak.  The Caribs enslaved or
killed the men and married the women.  The men's language was
supposedly derived from the Carib spoken by the invaders.
     Efforts to identity archaeological remains reflecting the
presumed "Carib invasion" of the Lesser Antilles have been
unsuccessful.  In the 1960s, archaeologist Ripley Bullen of the
University of Florida proposed a link between the Carib invasion
and Suazey pottery, which appeared on islands from Martinique
southward around A.D. 1100.  However, Bullen's theory has been
disputed by other investigators.  Louis Allaire of the University
of Alberta and Dutch archaeologist Arie Boomert have found
similarities between ceramics in the Lesser Antilles and Guyana,
but the documentation remains incomplete.
     The tale reported by Breton is not without problems, and the
answer to the Island Carib's origins may lie in a different
understanding of the historical and linguistic evidence.  As
linguists Berend Hoff, of the University of Leiden, and the late
Douglas Taylor showed, the Island Carib men's language is in fact
a pidgin--a tongue lacking a full lexicon and possessing a highly
simplified grammar.  If the Island Carib men's language was like
most other pidgins, it more likely reflects peaceful interaction
between South American Caribs and Arawaks living in the Lesser
Antilles.  This interpretation suggests that the Island Caribs
were in fact of Arawak descent and not the successors of male
invaders from the mainland.  And whatever the true extent of
cannibalism among these peoples, it clearly has been exaggerated. 
Notwithstanding the infamy of the Island Caribs, Breton
apparently never observed an instance of cannibalism.  In the
broader context of Arawakan peoples in the West Indies, the
Island Caribs may have been "black sheep" by reputation, but they
were part of the same flock.
 
Reprint permission granted by publisher.