Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
The neighbourhood of two elements as irreconcilable as the Caribs and the white colonists could only
end in the extinction of one of them, and by the end of the eighteenth century the Caribs had virtually
vanished as a race from all the islands except Dominica and St. Vincent.
The Caribs of Dominica remained the largest pocket of them—but not very large; Father Labat, at the
beginning of the eighteenth century, reckoned that there could not be many more than two thousand in the
island, though this number was certainly increased by countrymen fleeing from extermination in the oth-
er Antilles. In spite of the island's neutrality, many French planters settled there and imported slaves. It
was finally assigned to the English in 1763, and, with short interregna of French invasion and occupation,
it has remained in their possession ever since. Roseau and Portsmouth were suddenly full of Union Jacks
and redcoats and powdered wigs. But the unofficial French period bestowed upon the Negroes (and those
that were later imported by the English) the Créole patois and the Catholic faith. As the colony became
organized and the population of slaves increased, the number of the Caribs shrank. Bit by bit, all three of
their languages disappeared, to be replaced by Créole and, during the first decades of the nineteenth cen-
tury, a more plausible and, at any rate in appearance, more deep-rooted conversion to the Catholic faith
took place. Cannibalism had died out long ago, and many other customs, including their war paint and
their dress, vanished one by one. Lost in the overwhelming Negro world, they had ceased to be danger-
ous. In 1903 the British Government, disturbed at their decline in numbers through miscegenation, and in
prosperity through their inadaptability to alien ways, created by decree the Carib reserve where they now
live. There are, in these few miles of mountains and forests, scarcely five hundred of them left, and of
these many have a small amount of African blood. In the whole world there are now only about a hundred
pure-blooded Caribs left, and the little rearguard is growing smaller every year. They are a doomed race
lingering on the shores of extinction, and in a generation or two, unless some miracle of regeneration and
fecundity intervenes, the black tide will have risen and swept them off the face of the earth for ever.
They are all, Caribs and mestizo-Caribs, consumingly proud of their race, and, whatever their internal
feuds may be, they are a stubborn and compact community in their attitude to the outside world. For the
last few decades they have been presided over by a sort of elective voivode with the style of king, though
the title is legally in abeyance at the moment owing to certain troubles with the authorities in Roseau.
The present king or chieftain, George Frederick, whose office entails a civil list of ten shillings monthly
from British Government funds, is the head of the Carib Council, which is responsible for the conduct of
Carib home affairs. George Frederick owes his present position to his ability to read and write English
as well as Créole. Most of the other elders spoke it imperfectly and all talked Créole among themselves.
The only responsibility of the Caribs is to keep the bridle path open which runs through their territory, by
cutting back the creepers and undergrowth.
The king and his council accompanied us from hut to hut of their little forest capital of Battaka. Most
of the houses were built of shingle or bamboo and palm trash and scattered about singly in the woods.
The women were pounding cassava in wooden mortars, sorting jute or coco beans on cloths spread out
on the ground, or weaving baskets. Many of these Carib women were fine looking, with smooth blank
faces of pale copper colour, and long gleaming black hair. In one clearing an elderly Carib lay smoking
in a hammock stretched between the door-post and a calabash tree that suspended above his restful figure
half a dozen heavy green balloons.
No particular value is attached to virginity or technical chastity among these people, and bastards are
always treated with kindness. Marriages in every degree of consanguinity except brother and sister, moth-
er and son or father and daughter are usual, and the culminating step in a courtship is often a formal-
Search WWH ::




Custom Search