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Buckled around his waist was an ancient ship's cutlass contributed to his equipment by Pedro Lafitte, the baker, who proudly asserted its inheritance from his ancestor, the illustrious buccaneer. At the admiral's heels tagged his newly-shipped crew three grinning, glossy, black Caribs, bare to the waist, the sand spurting in showers from the spring of their naked feet.
This difference is found among the Caribs between the language of men and women; a phenomenon that probably arises from the circumstance that, among prisoners, men were oftener put to death than women.
In 1535 he complains to the emperor that the authorities in San Juan have not assisted him in his enterprise, and in the following year the governor and crown officers address a complaint against him to the empress, saying: "Sedeño presented a schedule authorizing him to bring 200 men from the Canary Islands to make war with fire and sword on the Caribs of Trinidad, and permitting him, or any other person authorized by him, to fit out an expedition for the same purpose here.
Indeed, if, as was not improbable, there was a general rising of the Caribs and blacks on the island, the small number of troops stationed in the garrison would be fully occupied in attempting to put them down, and perhaps none could be spared to come to their relief. None of the party, however, appeared alarmed.
The southern Haytians learned, warlike habits from these encroaching Caribs, and were less gentle than the natives whom Columbus first met along the northern coast. But they were all gentler, fairer, more graceful and simple than the Caribs, or the natives of the main. Their ambition found its limit when the necessaries of daily life were procured.
These people were found to be castrated; for they had been made prisoners by the Caribs in some other islands, who had so used them as we do capons, that they might become fatter and better food. Departing from thence, the admiral continued his voyage W.N.W. where he fell in with a cluster of above fifty islands, which he left to the northward of his course.
We found, besides the Guamos and the Ottomacs of Uruana, who are both considered as savage races, Caribs and other Indians of the Lower Orinoco. Every tribe was separately encamped, and was distinguished by the pigments with which their skins were painted.
In these sanguinary struggles, the Carib women, after the death of their husbands, defended themselves with such desperation that Anghiera says they were taken for tribes of Amazons. But amidst the cruelties exercised on the Caribs, it is consolatory to find, that there existed some courageous men who raised the voice of humanity and justice.
Through three hundred miles of jungle and swamp they pressed their way, and came to the homes of the Indian tribes; to the Accawois, who earned their living as professional assassins; to the Warrows, who wallowed in the marshes; to the Arawaks, or "Flour People," who prepared tapioca; to the Caribs, who sought them that had familiar spirits and wizards that peep and mutter.
Another theory of the origin of the Caribs is that advanced by M. d'Orbigny, who, after eight years of travel over the South American continent, published the result of his researches in Paris in 1834. He considers them to be a branch of the great Guaraní family.
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