The Caribs probably spoke more than one dialect when they first invaded the mainland from the islands of the Caribbean, but now the number of the tribes and languages considered by Señor Tavera-Acosta to belong to the group is about thirty, including the following: Caribe, Tamanaco, Otomak, Maquiritare or Uayungomo (also spelt Guayungomo and Waiomgomo. In every case for names beginning with U there is the alternative spelling with the unsounded Spanish G, and B and V are interchangeable), Maco or Macapure, Cuacua or Mapoyo, Taparita, Uiquire or Uiquiare, Pauare, Pareca, Uayamara, Cadupinapo, Curasicana, Yabarana, Arecuna, Macusi, Uaica, and others of minor importance.
The members of these tribes were those who, like the Goajiros, fought most stoutly for their independence when they saw it menaced by the conquistadores. These patriots, superior in many respects, as we have seen, to their foes, were characterised by the European invaders as cannibals, vicious and degraded, and the Jesuits later, in their holy zeal for souls (conquista espiritual) were no less harsh in their judgments on those who naturally resented the separation of parents from children and husband from wife and the general atrocities of the self-styled Christians who thus endeavoured to forcibly convert them.
In reality they were then, what they still are where unspoilt by “civilisation,” a fine race physically, brave and intelligent, possessing, no doubt, the vices of savagery, but also its virtues. The charges of cannibalism brought by the European exploiters of the New World (who had the vices of civilisation and barbarism combined, without the virtues of either) were either entirely baseless, or due to the ignorance which mistook the limbs of monkeys, which the Indians were always accustomed to eat, for those of men. As we have seen (Chapter IV.), the only substantiated cases of cannibalism occurred among the conquistadores themselves.
As an instance of the unintentional perversion of facts, it is interesting to recall the sixteenth and seventeenth century fables of the headless men of the Caura, the Ewaipanomo. The banks of the Caura are, in point of fact, inhabited by the Uayungomo branch of the Caribs, a name sufficiently like to be possibly the same. Whether that be so or no, a perusal of Raleigh’s and other original accounts gives the impression that some member of one of the shorter aboriginal tribes told the white men, by signs, that in the direction of the Caura were men whose shoulders were above their heads (i.e., the heads of the speakers). I put this forward as a plausible hypothesis for the origin of the fable, which may not commend itself to all, but may be compared with that advanced by various writers to explain the legend of the Amazon communities of this region.
The story of manless villages and tribes was told (and doubtless is still told) to nearly all travellers in Guayana and Brazil, and it has been suggested that the statements are founded upon actual attempts at emancipation on the part of small groups of women intelligent enough to realise the light esteem in which they were held in the social organisation of the Indians, and their worthiness of better treatment. These banded themselves together in free villages in remote parts of the forest, were seen at times by, or perhaps fought with, members of the normal tribes, and so gave rise to a legend of a nation of warlike independent women living somewhere, but no man knew where.
To return to the Caribs, we find these peoples at the present day inhabiting the forests along the banks of the Caroni, Parana, and Caura almost entirely, and particular regions on the Upper Orinoco and its tributaries, notably the Ventuari. They are still among the best formed and most intelligent natives of Venezuela, and retain in their native haunts the many industries by which they long ago learned to support themselves upon the produce of the forest lands.
These industries include cultivation of corn and manioc, the manufacture of fibres from the moriche-palm for cloth, of simple earthenware, often decorated with hieroglyphics in colour, of pigments for this and for painting their bodies in wartime. Their arrows are often poisoned with curare, the concentrated and congealed sap of the mavacure creeper, sometimes also with the extracted juice of the poisonous manioc. From the pith of the moriche-palm they obtain a kind of sago-meal, and this, with maize flour, bitter and sweet manioc or cassava-bread, and fish-paste or meat from their hunting expeditions, forms their staple diet. Their canoes are of bark or dug out of the solid trunk with the aid of stone or flint hatchets or fire. For hunting and war they had in early times good bows and arrows, spears of hard, heavy wood, shields of plaited creepers covered with hides of manati, tapir, or jaguar. Nor were they without musical (?) instruments, of which the maracas or rattles of small dried calabashes are used all over Venezuela in the country districts to-day.
Their religious beliefs appear to be, generally speaking, those of the Goajiros without the sun-worship, and birth, marriage, and death customs are much alike amongst all the tribes, whether Carib or no. The only difference here is that, in place of the usual marriage by consent without any religious ceremony, at the time of their conquest of the mainland, they adopted in part a marriage by capture, which has otherwise never been their custom.
The principal tribes of the aborigines of Guayana are thus enumerated, with their distribution and general characteristics, by Tavera Acosta, the spelling of the names being changed in some cases.
(1) The Warraus or Guaraunos (see note, p. 122) of the Delta; dull, unintelligent, and dirty.