Dominica - The Traveller's Tree: A Journey Through the Caribbean Islands - page 70

recorded to tackle sharks with knives and fight them under water until the shark floated to the top of the
scarlet waves.
Father Labat never tired of admiring their skill at archery, for the children learnt to use bows as soon
as they were weaned. He used to stick a wand into the ground and fasten a small coin to the top with
wax. And children of ten, at a distance of fifty yards, would never miss, firing arrow after arrow at light-
ning speed, and yet with such nonchalance that they never appeared to aim. The grown Caribs would kill
minute birds on branches so far away that they were invisible to the Father. For hunting small birds they
affixed buttons to the ends of their arrows like those used on a fencer's foil, and so rapid was their fire
that many observers thought that several arrows were loosed off simultaneously. Their bows were strung
with liana, and their long reed arrows tipped with notched and iron-hard wood, which they poisoned by
dipping into holes in the trunks of the manchineel tree. They shot fish from rocks and canoes, the string
of each arrow being attached to a piece of wood to mark, like a buoy, the whereabouts of the captive.
Their method of catching parrots was singular. They stole under the trees where the birds perched for the
night, and laid burning brands sprinkled with gums and green peppers on the grass. If the parrots lived in
the topmost branches, they would approach the trees on tiptoe with the burning drug in gourds attached
to the ends of long poles. The fumes rose through the branches, and the dizzy birds fell half stupefied to
the ground. The waiting Caribs quickly tied them up and revived them by throwing water in their faces,
and carried them off to their huts to instruct them in one of their uncouth languages.
So violent was their sense of liberty that they jeered at the whites for their social hierarchy and their
respect for rank, taxing them with having the habits and the mentality of slaves. On the rare occasions
when they consented to become servants they were indolents et fantasques , and so touchy that the faintest
slur on their dignity would drive them to flight or to hanging themselves or to swallowing earth until they
died. Their hatred of coercion and their indomitable independence made it impossible for them to live
beside Europeans, who saw no solution to the situation except in isolating or exterminating them. Until
the latter solution could be enforced, both French and English were at pains to keep on good terms with
the Caribs. Compère was the polite form of address in speaking to them, or, more formally, Banaré , a
Carib word meaning 'He who has come by sea.' Their hostility was dreaded. Their method of attack on a
wooden house was to loose off arrows, armed with burning cotton, into the thatch. When the house was
on fire, the attackers, from the shadow of the trees, would shoot the inhabitants full of arrows as they
tried to escape from the blaze. Their ambushes were almost more to be feared, for the Caribs would cover
themselves entirely with branches, and tie a flat balisier-leaf over their heads, into which two eye-holes
had been cut. They would wait beside the path for hours, and strike down their enemy as he passed; then,
stepping backwards a pace, or falling flat among the bushes, they would be indistinguishable from the
woods that surrounded them.
Father Labat, at the end of his journey, left the island with a collection of trophies, all bought in ex-
change for bottles of rum, of which he carried enormous supplies. It is agreeable to think of this massive,
tonsured figure striding, in his voluminous black and white habit, along these green forest paths. Behind
him trotted a couple of slaves with his luggage on their heads, urging a horse whose panniers bulged with
bottles and demijohns and cold pork and ortolans and partridges, and with books and writing materials.
Some bows and arrows were tied on top, a mace or two, and a fine bridal hammock. A set of carakolis
rattled in his pouch alongside a number of green jadeite baubles which were sovereign against dazzle-
ment, epilepsy and vertigo, and in his hands he carried a wicker Carib cage containing three magnificent
parrots which screamed through the bars in protest against the violence of their motion.