Dominica - The Traveller's Tree: A Journey Through the Caribbean Islands - page 65

We dismounted and walked towards them, and, as we met, hats were raised on either side with some
solemnity. And we all shook hands. This meeting with the last survivors of this almost extinct race of con-
querors was as stirring and impressive in its way as if the encounter had been with Etruscans or Hittites.
We were now able to see that they were either ivory-coloured in complexion or a deep bronze, with
features that were almost Mongolian or Esquimaux except for the well-defined noses. Their straight black
hair was cut across their foreheads in a fringe. They had a dignity of presence that even their hideous
European rags could not stifle. A tall man in the middle, smoking a pipe and equipped with an elaborate
walking-stick, took charge of us with a diffident, almost Manchu solemnity. This was George Frederick,
the king or chief of the Caribs, and the elders that surrounded him were members of the Carib Council.
He led us up a steep path through the leaves to a little green glade in front of his own shingle hut, where
we sat down under a mango tree, and leaned our backs against a half-excavated canoe. An old man in a
doorway was weaving a basket. These are remarkable things, accomplished with great intricacy and fin-
ish. Different coloured rushes and leaves are shredded into fine strands, and woven into complex angular
patterns that give the effect of mosaic. The basket is composed of two deep oblongs open on one side
that fit into each other as smoothly as the halves of a revelation suitcase, and grip each other so tightly
that no other fastening is needed. The fineness of the mesh makes them completely water-tight. As we
watched the strands overlap in the skilful fingers, a dozen coconuts came thundering from a palm tree,
and a young Carib slid down the trunk with his bare cutlass in his hand. The king opened them deftly,
and offered us the milk, saying that he was sorry Mrs. Napier had not come with us, because, as her chief
constituent, he wanted to have a serious chat about island affairs.
The presence of these men sends the mind winging back to the vague centuries before the November
Sunday [1] in 1493 when, with a volley of poisoned arrows, the ancestors of these Caribs drove the sailors
of Columbus back to their boats, forcing the Admiral to set sail again in the direction of Guadeloupe.
How many centuries earlier, nobody knows, for the only traces of that dim pre-Columbian age are half a
dozen lumps of stone scattered among the islands, incised with a few barbaric golliwogs, and all the rest
is surmise.
Some writers speak of a prehistoric population in these islands, known, in Haiti and Cuba, as the
Ciboneys, and in Martinique as the Ygneris. But about these shadowy figures almost nothing, barely the
fact of their existence, is known, and they have left scarcely a trace.
The first really authenticated inhabitants of the Antilles were the Arawak Indians, who originated
in Venezuela and the Guianas, [2] and sailed northwards in fleets of canoes at some remote period,
stopping and settling on each island as they reached it, and then spreading farther north and finally
peopling—several millions of them—the entire festoon of islands from Trinidad to Cuba. They seem
to have been a sedentary, pacific people, hospitable and affectionate, living an almost idyllic life in the
empty Lebensraum of the archipelago. They were ruled by Caciques and by a priestly clan, and they prac-
tised a primitive religion that is called by ethnologists Zemiism; a cult which was based on the worship
of a supreme being in the form of Zemis, or idols. They were hunters and fishermen and farmers in a
small way. Singing and dancing and lying in their hammocks, smoking tobacco through calumets were
their chief recreations. The central tube of their pipes forked into two prongs, which were inserted into
the nostrils, a method of smoking that put them into a state of semi-stupefaction and kef that played a cer-
tain part in their religious observances. Their usual pets were parrots and little dogs called alcos, which
were unable to bark; ideal companions. They used to flatten the foreheads of their babies by binding a flat