Robert Merry's Museum, Volumes I-II (1841)

by Various

There have been many speculations respecting the origin of the Caribs. That they were a different race from the inhabitants of the other islands, is generally acknowledged. They also differed from the Indians of Mexico and Peru; though some writers think they were culprits banished either from the continent or the large islands, and thus a difference of situation might have produced a difference of manners. Others think they were descended from some civilized people of Europe or Africa. There is no difficulty attending the belief that a Carthaginian or Ph[oe]nician vessel might have been overtaken by a storm, and blown about by the gales, till it entered the current of the trade-winds, when it would have been easily carried to the West Indies. If they had no women with them, they might have discovered the large islands or the continent, and procured wives from them. In process of time, their numbers might have increased so as to form the scanty population of St. Vincent, Martinico, Guadaloupe, Dominica, and other small islands where the Caribs were settled.

The Caribs had as many of the arts as were necessary to live at ease in that luxurious climate. They knew how to build their carbets or houses; how to make their boats, baskets, arms, hammocks, and to prepare their provisions.

The hammocks of the Caribs strengthens the supposition that they were descended from some maritime adventurers. They were made of coarse cotton cloth, six or seven feet long, and twelve or fourteen wide; each end was ornamented with cords, which they called ribands; these were more than two feet long, twisted, and well made. All the cords at each end were joined together, and formed loops, through which a long rope was inserted, in order to fasten the hammocks to the posts at the side of the house, and to support the persons within them. These hammocks were woven by the women, entirely by hand labor, as they had no looms, and was a very tedious process. But when completed, and painted red, as was the usual fashion, they were very strong, and quite ornamental in their carbets.

Carib Carbet.

The carbet is thus described by a French missionary: “The Carib dwelling I entered was about sixty feet long and twenty-four wide. The posts on which it was erected were rough and forked, and the shortest of them about nine feet above the ground; the others were proportioned to the height of the roof. The windward end was enclosed with a kind of wicker-work of split flags; the roof was covered with the leaves of the wild plantain, which here grows very large; the laths were made of reeds. The end of the carbet which was covered had a doorway for a passage to the kitchen; the other end was nearly all open. Ten paces from the great carbet was another building, about half the size of the large one, which was divided by a reed partition. The first room was the kitchen; here six or eight females were employed in making cassada. The second room was for a sleeping apartment for such of the women and children as were not accommodated in the great carbet.

“All the rooms were furnished with hammocks and baskets. The men had their weapons in the great carbet. Some of the men were making baskets—two women were making a hammock. There were many bows, arrows, and clubs attached to the rafters. The floor was smooth and clean; it was made of well-beaten earth, and sloped towards the side. There was a good fire, about one third the length of the carbet, round which a number of Caribs were squatted on their haunches. They were smoking and waiting till some fish were roasted, and made their salutations to me without rising.”

The Caribs were hunters and fishermen. Their food was much better cooked than that of the Indians of the northern continent, who lived by the chase and fishing, though to us it would not appear very refined. Their meat and small birds they stuck on a kind of wooden spit, which was fixed in the ground before the fire, and they turned it, till all the slices of meat or the birds were roasted.

This was quite a civilized method of management compared with their treatment of the large birds, such as parrots, pigeons, &c. These they threw on the fire, without picking or dressing them, and when the feathers were burnt, they raked the bird up in the cinders till it was done. On taking it from the ashes, the crust formed by the burnt feathers peeled off, and the bird was perfectly clean and delicate. It is said this manner of roasting was much approved by the Europeans who had an opportunity of trying it.

The Caribs usually spread two tables at their meals; on one was placed their bread, (cassada,) on the other the fish, fowls, crabs and pimentado. This pimentado was made of the juice of manioc, boiled, a quantity of pimento, and the juice of lemon or some other acid. It was their favorite sauce; they used it with all their meats, but they made it so hot that nobody but themselves could eat it. A favorite dish with them was stewed crabs. None of their food was eaten raw; in general their taste seemed inclined to overdone and high-seasoned dishes.