Ka Nupepa Kuokoa, Volume XL, Number 48, 28 Nowemapa 1902 — CARIB CANIBALS. [ARTICLE]

CARIB CANIBALS.

; A recent Colonial report on the Caribs of Dominica is interestlng. Very mysterious is the origin of the fierce savages, now almost extinct, who were in possession of the smalier West Indian islands when the first white man burst "into that silent sea." ' They showed a distinct Mongolian character, and it would be hard to distinguish a Carib infant from a Chinese child. Some twenty years ago a Chinaman, who had drifted to Dominica, declared the Caribs to be his own peoule, and married a pure bred Carib woman. The resultant child showed no deVlation from the native typ°Today they have dropped their man- ; eating ways; but in the sixteenth eentury they scoured the Spanish Maln ln search of human food, and from Porto Hieo alone have said to have taljen more than five thousand men 4,0 be eaten. Though Spaniards, Frenciymen, Dutchmen, negroes, or Arrowaks, were all m©at to them, yet these Caribs seem to have shown preference for certain nationalities. Davis, for instance, in his "History of th6 Caribby Islands," tells? us that "the Caribbeans have tested of .all the\nations that frequented them, and afflrm that the French are the most delicate, and the Spaniards are 5 hardest of digestion." L»aborde, also, in one of his jaunts in St. Vincent, appears to have overtaken, on the road. a communicative Carib who was beguiling the tedium of his journey by gnawing at the remains of a boilM human foot. This gentleman only ate Arrowalh. "Christians," he said, "gave : him the bellv aehe."