Caribbean (group of peoples)

The Caribbean live in Colombia , Venezuela , Brazil , Peru , Guyana , Guiana , Suriname , mainly between the Orinoco , Rio Negro and Amazon rivers , and the Atlantic Ocean .

Habitat - tropical forests, the closest culture to Arawaks .

Probably, the resettlement of the Caribbean began from Guiana . In the XIV-XV centuries, they began to move to the Lesser Antilles , where they mixed with the Arawaks and switched to their language. Some Caribbean tribes became extinct by the beginning of the 20th century.

In the history of individual tribes there were also such facts when runaway African slaves were at enmity with the Indians and oppressed them, collecting tribute from them (XIX century) . Runaway slaves spoke European, but adopted an Indian lifestyle. On the island of St. Vincent, runaway African slaves mingled with the local Caribbean, forming the Black Caribbean nationality - Garifuna .

The Caribbean of the Antilles had 2 languages, male and female. They probably appeared when the Caribs (men) mixed with the Arawak people (the Karaites destroyed the neighboring tribes, leaving only women ^[1] ), and this division was also supported among children.

The Caribbean family includes about 50 languages ​​and dialects, of which virtually none are widely known. This, for example, araya, aracuaju, guaikeri, guamako, guarino, zhamarikum, carib, paravilana, rukien, totomako, etc.

The Caribbean settlement is a large small house or several houses for large families around a man’s house in the center of the village (a layout typical for other Indian peoples). Social relations are characterized by a matrilineal account of kinship and matrilocal settlement . Some other vestiges of matriarchy remained, although power belonged to men. Some tribes (makiritare) had a ceremony at the holidays: women attacked men with fists, and they gave them meat.

The Caribbean were considered warlike and aggressive, although they did not exceed their neighbors in the number of soldiers and weapons. Nevertheless, at the time of Columbus, they offered fierce resistance to the Spaniards. Some Lesser Antilles ( Saint Vincent , Saint Lucia ), due to the resistance of the Caribbean, the Europeans managed to colonize only by the end of the XVII century.

Traditional occupations are manual slash-and-burn farming , cultivation of bitter cassava , and also fishing (using poison).

Artistic weaving (geometrized zoomorphic images), the manufacture of beadwork, hammocks, dugout boats, and woodcarving (benches for shamans and leaders with animal images) are developed.

One of the main custodians of the spiritual culture of the Caribbean Indians are shamans (Carib. Poiai). Caribbean mythology is characterized by stories about twins, catching women from the water, where they swam in the form of fish, etc.

Boys go through initiation .

Beliefs - retain totemism , unlike other South American peoples, who have only faith in werewolf . In this they are close to the Arawak.

At the end of the XVIII century. Carib’s cult of the Moon is described: on the new moon, everyone takes each other’s hands, the elder reads a prayer to the Moon with the refrain “Amontikamava”, after which everyone, hugging, crying, prostrate themselves on the ground, go home and are silent in fear ^{[2] ]} .

Initiations included trials of more or less severe physical suffering. One of the Caribbean tribes, oyan , had flagellation, ant bites, and roasting on fire. Often, all were scourged, but men and boys more. After the tests, the Indian was considered a real hunter, and received the right to hunt big game, deer and other animals, as well as use bamboo flutes . In the Caribbean, the cult of musical instruments was weaker than that of the Arawak, women did not use them, but could look at the players. By the example of the same tribe, one can also see the nature of beliefs. In men's houses they installed images of people, animals, birds and fish, but more often they were marake monsters, that is, the spirit of anaconda. All this was colorfully depicted on a wooden disk with a brush made of human hair. The disk itself was carved in the past with stone tools, which was not so simple.

• Uayana
• Garifuna

• Berezkin Yu. E. Voice of the devil among the snows and the jungle. - L .: Lenizdat, 1987.
• Tokarev S.A. Religion in the history of the peoples of the world. - M. , 1976.
• Peoples and religions of the world : Encyclopedia / Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology. N.N. Miklukho-Maklaya Ros. Acad. Science (Moscow); Ch. ed. V. A. Tishkov; Editorial board: O. Yu. Artemova, S. A. Arutyunov, A. N. Kozhanovsky, V. M. Makarevich (deputy head of editorial board), V. A. Popov, P. I. Puchkov (deputy head of chapter Ed.), G. Yu. Sitnyansky. - M .: Big rose. encycl., 1998 .-- 928 s. - 100,000 copies. - ISBN 5-85270-155-6.
• Karaibs // Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary : in 86 volumes (82 volumes and 4 additional). - SPb. , 1890-1907.

• Essay on the Caribbean and the Caribbean