The Garifuna people ( or ; pl. GarínaguRemembering How Anthony Bourdain Advocated for Latinos Published June 8, 2018, retrieved June 15, 2018 in Garifuna) are an Afro-Indigenous people of mixed free African and Amerindian ancestry who originated in the Caribbean island of Saint Vincent and traditionally speak Garifuna, an Arawakan language.
The Garifuna are the descendants of Indigenous Arawak and Kalinago (Island Carib) people, and Afro-Caribbean people. The founding population of the Central American diaspora, estimated at 2,500 to 5,000 persons, were transplanted to Roatán from Saint Vincent, which was known to the Garinagu as Yurumein, in the Windward Islands of the Lesser Antilles. Small Garifuna communities still live in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. The Garifuna diaspora abroad includes communities in Honduras, the United States, and Belize.
Name
In the Garifuna language, the endonym Garínagu refers to the people as a whole and the term Garífuna refers to an individual person, the culture, and the language. The terms Garífuna and Garínagu originated as African modifications of the Kalinago terms Karifuna and Kalinago respectively. The terms may have been used by the Garifuna to refer to themselves as early as the mid-17th century.
The Garifuna were historically known by the exonyms Caribs, Black Caribs, and Island Caribs. European explorers began to use the term Black Caribs in the 17th century. In the 18th century, English accounts used the terms Black Caribs and Yellow or Red Caribs to differentiate, with some ambiguity, two groups with a similar culture by their skin color. The British colonial use of the term Black Carib, particularly in William Young's Account of the Black Charaibs (1795), has been described in modern historiography as framing the majority of the Indigenous St. Vincent population as "mere interlopers from Africa" who lacked claims to land possession in St. Vincent.
History Carib background The Carib people migrated from South America to the Caribbean circa 1200, according to carbon dating of artifacts. According to Taíno testimonies, the Kalinago largely displaced, exterminated and assimilated the Taíno who were resident on the islands at the time, as well as the earlier Igneri.Sweeney, James L. (2007). "Caribs, Maroons, Jacobins, Brigands, and Sugar Barons: The Last Stand of the Black Caribs on St. Vincent", African Diaspora Archaeology Network, March 2007, retrieved 26 April 2007Figueredo, D. H. (2008). A Brief History of the Caribbean. Infobase Publishing. p. 9. Deagan, Kathleen A. (2008). Columbus's Outpost Among the Taínos: Spain and America at La Isabela, 1493–1498. Yale University Press. p. 32. .
17th century The French missionary Raymond Breton arrived in the Lesser Antilles in 1635, and lived in Guadeloupe and Dominica until 1653. He took ethnographic and linguistic notes on the native peoples of these islands, including St. Vincent, which he visited briefly.
In 1635 the Carib were overwhelmed by French forces led by the adventurer Pierre Belain d'Esnambuc and his nephew Jacques Dyel du Parquet. Cardinal Richelieu of France gave the island to the Compagnie de Saint-Christophe, in which he was a shareholder. Later the company was reorganized as the Compagnie des Îles de l'Amérique. The French colonists imposed French Law on the inhabitants, and Jesuit missionaries arrived to convert them to the Catholic Church."Institutional History of Martinique" , Martinique Official site, French Government (translation by Maryanne Dassonville). Retrieved 26 April 2007
Because the Carib people resisted working as laborers to build and maintain the sugar and cocoa plantations which the French began to develop in the Caribbean, in 1636, Louis XIII proclaimed La Traité des Noirs. This authorized the capture and purchase of enslaved people from sub-Saharan Africa and their transportation as labor to Martinique and other parts of the French West Indies.
In 1650, the company liquidated, selling Martinique to Jacques Dyel du Parquet, who became governor. He held this position until his death in 1658. His widow Mme. du Parquet took over control of the island from France. As more French colonists arrived, they were attracted to the fertile area known as Cabesterre (leeward side). The French had pushed the remaining Carib people to this northeastern coast and the Caravalle Peninsula, but the colonists wanted the additional land. The Jesuits and the Dominicans agreed that whichever order arrived there first, would get all future parishes in that part of the island. The Jesuits came by sea and the Dominicans by land, with the Dominicans ultimately prevailing.
When the Carib revolted against French rule in 1660, Governor Charles Houël du Petit Pré retaliated with war against them. Many were killed; those who survived were taken captive and expelled from the island. On Martinique, the French colonists signed a peace treaty with the few remaining Carib. Some Carib had fled to Dominica and Saint Vincent, where the French agreed to leave them at peace.
William Young's Report on St. Vincent
After the arrival of the English to St. Vincent in 1667, English officer John Scott wrote a report for the English Crown noting that St. Vincent was populated by Caribs and a small number of Africans from shipwrecked Spanish vessels. Later, in 1795, the British governor of St. Vincent, William Young, noted in his report to the British Crown that the island had populations of Africans who arrived after the wreck of two Spanish slave ships near St. Vincent in 1635. These ships were bound for the West Indies (Bahamas and Antilles).Young, William. An Account of the Black Charaibs in the Island of St. Vincent's. London: 1795. Available at: Archive.org
According to Young's report, the Africans aboard the shipwrecked vessels, largely from the Ibibio ethnic group of modern-day Nigeria, survived the wreck and reached the island, living independently. Contrary to some historical accounts, these Africans were never enslaved and were not captured by the Caribs. Instead, they formed independent communities that gradually integrated with Indigenous peoples of the island. Over time, these Afro-Indigenous communities developed into the Garifuna people, a distinct cultural group with a unique language, traditions, and identity.Garifuna ResearchHostal GarífunaAmandala NewsGarifuna reach: Historia de los garífunas. Posted by Itarala.
Modern historiography
Several modern researchers have rejected the theory espoused by Young. According to them, most of the enslaved people who arrived in Saint Vincent actually came from other Caribbean islands, and had settled in Saint Vincent in order to escape slavery, therefore Maroons came from plantations on nearby islands."Escala de intensidad de los africanos en el Nuevo Mundo", p. 136. Although most of the enslaved people came from Barbados (most of the enslaved people of this island were from present-day Nigeria and Ghana), but they also came from places such as St. Lucia (where enslaved people likely came from what is now Senegal, Nigeria, Angola) and Grenada (where there were many enslaved people from Guinea, Sierra Leone, Nigeria, Angola, Kongo and Ghana). The Bajans and Saint Lucians arrived on the island before 1735. Later, after 1775, most of the enslaved people who arrived from other islands were Saint Lucians and Grenadians.A Brief History of St. Vincent After arriving on the island, they were taken in by the Caribs, who offered them protection, assisted themCharles Gullick, Myths of a minority, Assen: Van Gorcum, 1985. and, eventually mixed with them.
In addition to the African refugees, the Caribs captured enslaved people from neighboring islands (although they also had white people and their fellow Caribs as enslaved people), while they were fighting against the British and the French. Many of the captured enslaved people were integrated into their communities (this also occurred in islands such as Dominica). After the African rebellion against the Caribs, and their escape to the mountains, over time, according to Itarala, Africans would come down from the mountains to have sexual intercourse with Amerindian women - perhaps because most Africans were men - or to search for other kinds of food. The sexual activity did not necessarily lead to marriage. On the other hand, if the Maroons abducted Arauaco-Caribbean women or married them, is another of the contradictions between the French documents and the oral history of the Garinagu. Andrade Coelho states that "...whatever the case, the Caribs never consented to give their daughters in marriage to blacks".R. G. de Andrade Coelho, page. 37. Conversely, Sebastian R. Cayetano argues that "Africans were married with women Caribs of the islands, giving birth to the Garifuna".Ibidem, p. 66 According to Charles Gullick some Caribs mixed peacefully with the Maroons and some not, creating two factions, that of the Black Caribs and that of the Yellow Caribs, who fought on more than one occasion in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.Charles Gullick, "Ethnic interaction and carib language", page. 4. According to Itarala, many intermarried between Indigenous and African people, which was that which caused the origin of the Black Caribs.
18th century
Britain and France both made conflicting claims on Saint Vincent from the late seventeenth century onward. French pioneers began informally cultivating plots on the island around 1710. In 1719 the governor of the French colony of Martinique sent a military force to occupy it, but was repulsed by the Carib inhabitants. A British attempt in 1723 was likewise repelled.Young, Black Charaibs, pp. 12–13. In 1748, Britain and France agreed to put aside their claims and declared Saint Vincent to be a neutral island, under no European sovereignty.Young, Black Charaibs, p. 4. Throughout this period, however, unofficial, mostly French settlement took place on the island, especially on the Leeward side. African escapees continued to reach Saint Vincent, and a mixed-race population developed through unions with the Carib.
In 1763 by the Treaty of Paris, Britain gained control over Saint Vincent following its defeat of France in the Seven Years' War, fought in Europe, Asia and North America. It also took over all French territory in North America east of the Mississippi River. Through the rest of the century, the Carib-African natives mounted a series of Carib Wars, which were encouraged and supported by the French.
Carib wars