The Caribs: among the first to be enslaved, tortured and genocidally murdered in the New World

carib diorama
Originally uploaded by wesh

Carib, Island Carib or Kalinago people, after whom the Caribbean Sea was named, live in the Lesser Antilles islands, says Wikipedia.

They were among the first people to be enslaved, tortured and genocidally murdered by the Spanish in the New World.

The Caribs were skilled boatbuilders and sailors, and seem to have owed their dominance in the Caribbean basin to their mastery of the arts of war.

The Caribs were themselves displaced by the Europeans, and most were eventually exterminated or assimilated during the colonial period by the Spanish.

Even after Columbus was presented with evidence that the cannibalism of the indigenous people was a myth, the myth was perpetuated because in 1503, Queen Isabella ruled that only people who were better off under slavery (including cannibals) could legally be taken as slaves. This provided Spaniards an incentive and legalistic pretext for identifying various Amerindian groups as cannibals in order to enslave them and take their lands away from them.