The Original Caribs

1902

Very mysterious is the origin of the fierce savage, now almost extinct, who were in possession of the Caribs, the smaller West Indian islands, when the white man discovered them.

They showed a distinct Mongolian character and it would be hard to distinguish a Carib infant from a Chinese child. Twenty years ago a Chinaman who had drifted to Dominica declared the Caribs to be his own people and married a pure-bred Carib woman. The resultant child showed no deviation from the native type.

The Caribs have dropped their man-eating ways; but in the sixteenth century they scoured the Spanish main in search of human food and from Porto Rico alone are said to have taken more than 5,000 men to be eaten. Though Spaniards, Frenchmen, Dutchmen, negroes or Arrowaks were all meat to them, the Caribs seem to have shown an interesting preference for certain nationalities. Davis says in his "History of the Caribby Isands," that "the Caribbeans have tasted of all the nations that frequented them, and affirm that the French are the most delicate and the Spaniards are hardest of digestion."

Laborde in one of his jaunts in St. Vincent overtook on the road a communicative Carib who was beguiling the tedium of his journey by gnawing at the remains of a boiled human foot. This man ate Arrowaks only. "Christians," he said, "gave him indigestion."