The Ethnogenesis and Migration of the Garifuna:

Caribbean, Eastern Central America, and the United States

By Simeon Pillich, PH.D.

Sometime before Columbus traveled to the New World (no sources cite the exact date), the Arawak people were the predominant indigenous group in the Windward Islands of the eastern Caribbean. At approximately this same time, the Caribs, an indigenous group living in the area that stretched from the Orinoco Valley at the northern end of South America to the many eastern islands of the Lesser Antilles, migrated to St. Vincent.

The first wave of Caribs from South America arrived sometime around the first millennium. The Caribs, a fierce warrior culture, at first traded with, and later conquered, the more peaceful Arawaks. As Roger Bastide writes, “[t]he West Indies were originally inhabited by the Aruaks [sic], but subsequently occupied by their traditional enemies, the Carib Indians. The latter killed the Aruak men, but kept their wives” (1971:76). This led to a culture of Carib men who spoke their native language called Galibi and women who spoke an Arawakan dialect know as Igneri. This dichotomy will later play a role in the development of the modern Garifuna language. The group of Caribs associated with the takeover of St. Vincent and other islands came to be known by anthropologists as “Island Caribs” (Conzemius 1928:186). The European chroniclers of the day referred to them as “Red Caribs” due to their practice of painting themselves red with the dye from the annatto plant. However, this group of Caribs referred to their men as “Calinago” and their women as “Callipuna” (Allaire 1997:180).

In 1635, two ships of Spanish origin bearing African captives shipwrecked off the northeast corner of the island of St. Vincent. At the time of the Africans’ arrival, the Amerindian population of the island of St. Vincent was primarily composed of Island Caribs. to various accounts, these Africans were readily accepted into the Amerindian society and intermarried with the Red Caribs. The Garifuna culture grew out of this union between African and Amerindian peoples. The British referred to the mixture of the Island Carib and Africans as “Black Caribs.”

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