The Rise And Fall Of The Black Caribs Garifuna

The story begins in South America, where people who spoke Arawak-an Amerindian language fashioned a culture based on yuca or cassava farming, hunting and fishing in a dense forest cut by many rivers. By the year 1000 AD some of them had moved up the Orinoco River to the Caribbean Sea and it's islands, where they established a new way of life. Later other people, whom history has called "Caribs," moved into the Caribbean out of the same areas. The Caribs welcomed and protected the Negro refugees, and in time allowed them to marry the Caribs. The Africans then adopted the languages, culture and traditions of the Yellow Island Caribs. The intermarriage brought about a rapid growth of hybrid mixture of African and Yellow Indians Caribs. From this union arose a half-bred race possessing some Caribs and African characteristics to which the name Garifuna or Black Carib was given.

In The Black Carib Wars, author Christopher Taylor offers the fullest, most thoroughly researched history of the Garifuna people of St. Vincent, and their uneasy conflicts and alliances with Great Britain and France. The Garifuna--whose descendants were native Carib Indians, Arawaks and West African slaves brought to the Caribbean--were free citizens of St. Vincent. Beginning in the mid-1700s, they clashed with a number of colonial powers who claimed ownership of the island and its people. Upon the Garifuna's eventual defeat by the British in 1796, the people were dispersed to Central America. Today, roughly 600,000 descendants of the Garifuna live in Guatemala, Honduras, Belize, Nicaragua, the United States, and Canada. The Garifuna--called "Black Caribs" by the British to distinguish them from other groups of unintegrated Caribs--speak a language and live a culture that directly descends from natives of the Caribbean at the time of Columbus. Thus, the Garifuna heritage is one of the oldest and strongest links historians have to the region before European colonialism. The French, the first white people to live on St Vincent, attempted to subdue the Black Caribs but eventually developed an alliance with them. When the Treaty of Paris ostensibly handed St. Vincent to the British crown in 1763, the British clashed with the Black Caribs but, like the French, eventually formed another treaty. This cycle of attempted colonialism of St. Vincent by France and England alternately would continue for three decades. After repeated conflict and desperate measures by the European powers, the Garifuna were forced to surrender. In March 1797 the last survivors were loaded on to British ships and deported to the island of Roatán hundreds of miles away in the bay of Honduras. A little over 2,000 men, women and children were all that were left--perhaps a fifth of the Black Carib population of just two years earlier. It was a cataclysm. But the Black Caribs--the Garifuna in their own language--survived and their descendants number in the hundreds of thousands.

In The Black Carib Wars, Christopher Taylor offers the most thoroughly researched history of the struggle of the Garifuna people to preserve their freedom on the island of St. Vincent. Today, thousands of Garifuna people live in Honduras, Belize, Guatemala, Nicaragua and the United States, preserving their unique culture and speaking a language that directly descends from that spoken in the Caribbean at the time of Columbus. All trace their origins back to St. Vincent where their ancestors were native Carib Indians and shipwrecked or runaway West African slaves—hence the name by which they were known to French and British colonialists: Black Caribs. In the 1600s they encountered Europeans as adversaries and allies. But from the early 1700s, white people, particularly the French, began to settle on St. Vincent. The treaty of Paris in 1763 handed the island to the British who wanted the Black Caribs' land to grow sugar. Conflict was inevitable, and in a series of bloody wars punctuated by uneasy peace the Black Caribs took on the might of the British Empire. Over decades leaders such as Tourouya, Bigot, and Chatoyer organized the resistance of a society which had no central authority but united against the external threat. Finally, abandoned by their French allies, they were defeated, and the survivors deported to Central America in 1797. The Black Carib Wars draws on extensive research in Britain, France, and St. Vincent to offer a compelling narrative of the formative years of the Garifuna people.

Encyclopedia of Caribbean Archaeology offers a comprehensive overview of the available archaeological research conducted in the region. Beginning with the earliest native migrations and moving through contemporary issues of heritage management, the contributors tackle the usual questions of colonization, adaptation, and evolution while embracing newer research techniques, such as geoinformatics, archaeometry, paleodemography, DNA analysis, and seafaring simulations. Entries are cross-referenced so that readers can efficiently access data on a variety of related topics. The introduction includes a survey of the various archaeological periods in the Caribbean, as well as a discussion of the region’s geography, climate, topography, and oceanography. It also offers an easy-to-read review of the historical archaeology, providing a better understanding of the cultural contexts of the Caribbean that resulted from the convergence of European, Native American, African, and then Asian settlers.

Within the circum-Caribbean, the ubiquity of tourism and the variety of musical life are hard to miss. Scholars have long explored both of these themes in the Caribbean, but have done so from disciplinary perspectives that tended until recently (and for a variety of reasons) to foreclose readings that considered tourism and music together. This volume addresses itself to analyzing the dynamics and interrelationships between tourism and music throughout the region.