Once a Carib, Always a Carib: Historical Movements from Terra Firma to the Lesser Antilles

Abstract The so-called Island Carib Problem remains topical, and discoveries in the last decade have sparked further discussion. This article addresses this issue from the Guianas, where recent excavations have demonstrated the presence of a material counterpart of the Lesser Antilles from the seventeenth century. When compared to the insular Cayo complex, the continental complex of Malmanoury in what is today French Guiana suggests a historical movement of the Galibi toward the Antilles, where they overcame the local population, as told in a Callinago myth. This movement was driven by turmoil throughout the Guianas, Trinidad, and the Antilles during the sixteenth century caused by Indigenous warfare and migration in this area and was possibly an amplification of the late prehistoric Koriabo expansion. The Caribs encountered by Columbus were not the same Caribs met by Europeans in the seventeenth century.