Profile Of The Caribs

Description Of The Caribs

In that year, Columbus had landed in Guadaloupe, where he 'discovered' the Caribs, whose fierce reputation had preceded them. Their reputation as fiercely strong warriors was well known by the other aborigines, who had dutifully informed Columbus about them.

The palm of physical superiority and intelligence is to be awarded to the Caribs. They are without doubt the most robust, and the most intelligent of those in Venezuela. Not only this, I am inclined to consider them the superiors of all the Indians of South America. Vespucci too speaks of them as "Magnae Sapientiae viri" - Men of superior strength and valor. -- Exploracion Official by Sr. F. M. Rojas, p. 54

The Caribs were indeed a breed apart from the Indians. They did not succumb easily or quickly to the Europeans nor to anyone else. By the sixteenth century, they had conquered numerous territory in South America and the Caribbean where they could be found as far north as Puerto Rico. These Caribs were great warriors and were such a thorn in the side of the European settlers that the Europeans did everything they could to overcome them.

The Caribs were the last of the indigenous peoples of the Caribbean and South America to be overcome by the Europeans (1635). Henceforth, the Europeans, primarily the British, deemed it necessary to decree that the Caribs were too uncivilized and dangerous and must be removed from their homes and banished as far away as possible.