- Columbus and subsequent chroniclers wrote of indigenous people in the Caribbean who described being attacked by Caribbean cannibals.
- One argument against the veracity of these reports has centered on the lack of archaeological evidence that Caribs ever emigrated to the islands of the Bahamas described in these reports.
- A 2020 archaeological study of skulls suggests that the Caribs would have been well established in these regions with the arrival of Columbus. But some archaeologists disagree.
In October 1492, Christopher Columbus and his crew had been crossing the Atlantic for two months when they discovered an island on the horizon. The Spaniards hoped to reach “the noble island of Cipangu” or Japan – a country that is said to be rich in spices and gold. Instead, they ended up in the Bahamas.
Columbus kept a diary about his trip to the New World. He documented interactions with the Arawak-speaking indigenous people and described how he and his crew forcibly removed some of them on ships to help in the search for Japanese and Chinese riches. In addition to the abuse of natives, one topic in his entries has long been controversial: marauding cannibals.
Columbus wrote several entries about Arawak natives who said they had been attacked by Caribs – a people originally from the northwest of the Amazon who, according to recent research, were among the earliest settlers in the Caribbean.
“I saw [Arawaks] had marks of wounds on their bodies and I made signs to them and asked what they were and they showed me how people from other islands nearby came there and tried to take them and how they defended themselves, “wrote Columbus on his first day in the Bahamas.
Another entry describes how a group of Arawaks – who were traveling between the islands on one of the Spanish ships – reacted when they saw an island they believed was inhabited by Caribs:
“[The Arawaks] said that this land was very extensive and that there were people with an eye in their forehead and others they called “cannibals”. They showed great fear of the latter, and when they saw that this course was being taken they were speechless, he says, because these people ate them and because they are very belligerent. “
A similar entry describes how, when the Arawaks saw a particular island, “were mute because they feared they would be eaten, and [a crew member] could not calm their horror; and they said the people there only had one eye and the face of a dog. “
But despite these reports, many researchers believe that there were no cannibalistic intruders, arguing that Columbus must have been wrong, lied, or perhaps even lied to himself.
History or Harmful Myth?
At the beginning of the 16th century, the question of whether large-scale cannibalism was practiced in the Caribbean was palpably important for the indigenous people. Eventually, Columbus’ reports of Caribbean cannibals eventually led Queen Isabella of Spain to issue a decree of 1503 that said natives could be enslaved for the practice of cannibalism.
Researchers have argued that the law made it easier for Spaniards to enslave large numbers of indigenous people by simply branding them as cannibals, and that it added, more broadly, to the European notion that indigenous people are “savages”. Justin Winsor, a historian of Columbus, wrote that the Spaniards used stories of cannibalism to “overcome the earliest humane protests against the slaughter of the natives and their deportation for slaves”.
Today, Some historians argue that stories of cannibalism in the New World are still used to obscure or justify the violent history of European colonialism and Columbus, a figure that exists in the public imagination between the poles of the brave explorer and the evil colonizer. Ideological beliefs arguably influence researchers’ bias when it comes to cannibalism in the Caribbean.
So what’s the evidence? Aside from the Spanish reports, other reports suggest that the Caribs – which were, of course, a loosely defined group of multiple cultures that inhabited both the Caribbean and South America – practiced cannibalism in some forms. The French missionary Pierre Pelleprata from the 17th and then invited me to dinner. “
That was one of the accounts listed in Neil L. Whitehead’s 1984 paper “Caribbean Cannibalism. The Historical Evidence”who ends with the words that “a careful reading of the sources strongly suggests the existence of cannibalism among the Caribs.” But Whitehead was careful to distinguish limited ritual forms of cannibalism, such as eating a small amount of cooked meat from an enemy, from the more lurid descriptions of the Spanish, which in his opinion mostly boiled down to “imperial propaganda”.
As for Columbus’ reports of Caribbean cannibalism in the Bahamas, critics have stated that neither he nor his crew have ever seen a Caribbean who practiced cannibalism; most of the reports were based on stories they’d heard from the Arawaks. Columbus himself remarked that he “did not find any monsters”.
On the archaeological side, skeptics of the cannibalism narrative have argued that there is no evidence that the Carib people ever made it to the islands Columbus claimed to inhabit. Therefore, according to these critics, the cannibalism story is most likely fiction.
However, recent research suggests that the Caribs migrated to these islands and generally migrated through the Caribbean earlier than previously thought. While the controversial results do not confirm that the Caribs practiced cannibalism, they support the possibility.
Investigation of Caribbean Migrations
The aim of the study – published in Scientific Reports in 2020 – should find out from where different groups of people immigrated to the Caribbean. Previous archaeological research relied primarily on artifacts such as ceramics to determine migration patterns. But the most recent study looked at “faces instead of islands” by using imaging software to analyze the skull features of more than 100 skulls from people who lived in the Caribbean from about AD 800 to 1542.
The aim was to use the skull data – which the researchers called a “genetic proxy for studying” different populations – to determine how closely people were related to one another and to uncover any migration patterns.
The results showed that there were three different Caribbean groups, one of which was the Caribbean. The skull analyzes suggest that by the time Columbus arrived, the Caribs were well established in the Bahamas and therefore could have fought with the Arawak. The researchers found that their overall conclusion is supported by previous discoveries of Caribbean pottery in the Bahamas.
Proposed new three migration routes for colonization of the CaribbeanRoss et. al, Scientific Reports 2020
“The big idea is that anthropologists thought there were two waves of pre-Columbian migration to the Caribbean,” said Ann Ross, lead author of the study, told NC State University News.
“One that came to the Lesser Antilles from South America, like Grenada and Guadeloupe, and another that came from the Yucatán to Cuba. What we found shows that there was a third wave that was separate from the others. ” […] The Caribs were the third wave. Until now it was thought that the Carib could not get past Guadeloupe. But our work shows that they made it to the Bahamas. “
Controversial Claims
The study – which briefly mentioned the Caribbean cannibalism debate – sparked controversy among archaeologists. A paper The study, published in August 2021, described the research as “limited by sampling problems, problematic methodological choices, poorly supported archaeological claims, and inappropriate amalgamations of biology, ethnicity, artifacts, and questionable historical reports.”
The critics also elicited the mention of Caribbean cannibalism in the original paper:
“We find this particularly worrying as it can harm today’s descendants of the island caribs (the Kalinago of the Lesser Antilles and Garifuna) [also known as the Black Caribs] Central America) and South American communities affected by claims of Caribbean cannibalism, either through their association with the Caribbean language family or by being referred to as ‘Caribbean’.
The authors of the original study responded the critics, accusing them of misunderstanding the methodology and main objectives of the study. The response made no mention of cannibalism, but the authors noted that their study was “a collaborative effort in which archaeological research and excavations were approved and made available by present-day community members in the Bahamas to unravel the prehistory of the Caribbean.”
Christina Giovas, an archaeologist at Simon Fraser University and one of the critics of the original study, said in a opinion:
“The idea that the ancient Caribbean people were cannibals still lingers in the popular imagination, but there has never been any scientific evidence that they practiced cannibalism, even though we have really good archaeological techniques to detect it.”
Ross, lead author of the 2020 study, told The Daily Mail that the reviews represent “gross misunderstandings” of the work and appear like “performative allies”. Of course, none of the authors of the original study claim that their results prove that Caribs practiced cannibalism. But in contrast to writers and researchers who call the cannibalism narrative open not correct or need to be debunked, they leave open the possibility that the accounts of Columbus and other chroniclers might contain some truth.
“Maybe there was cannibalism involved [between the Caribs and Arawaks]”, William Keegan, 2020 Study Co-Author and Curator of Caribbean Archeology at the Florida Museum of Natural History, told the Florida Museum of Natural History. “If you need to scare your enemies, this is a really good option.”
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