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The narratives of the French, English, and Dutch conquerors of the Guianas and the lesser Antilles accord with the observations of Humboldt in describing the Caribs as an ambitious and intelligent race, among whom there still existed traces of a superior social organization, such as the hereditary power of chiefs, respect for the priestly caste, and attachment to ancient customs.  Employed only in fishing and hunting, the Carib was accustomed to the use of arms from childhood; war was the principal object of his existence, and the proofs through which the young warrior had to pass before being admitted to the ranks of the braves, remind us of the customs of certain North American Indians.

They were of a light yellow color with a sooty tint, small, black eyes, white and well-formed teeth, straight, shining, black hair, without a beard or hair on any other part of their bodies.  The expression of their face was sad, like that of all savage tribes in tropical regions.  They were of middle size, but strong and vigorous.  To protect their bodies from the stings of insects they anointed them with the juice or oil of certain plants.  They were polygamous.  From their women they exacted the most absolute submission.  The females did all the domestic labor, and were not permitted to eat in the presence of the men.  In case of infidelity the husband had the right to kill his wife.  Each family formed a village by itself (carbet) where the oldest member ruled.

Their industry, besides the manufacture of their arms and canoes, was limited to the spinning and dyeing of cotton goods, notably their hammocks, and the making of pottery for domestic uses.  Though possessing no temples, nor religious observances, they recognized two principles or spirits, the spirit of good (boyee) and the spirit of evil (maboya).  The priests invoked the first or drove out the second as occasion required.  Each individual had his good spirit.

Their language resembled in sound the Italian, the words being sonorous, terminating in vowels.  By the end of the eighteenth century the missionaries had made vocabularies of 50 Carib dialects, and the Bible had been translated into one of them, the Arawak.  A remarkable custom was the use of two distinct languages, one by the males, another by the females.  Tradition says that when the Caribs first invaded the Antilles they put to death all the males but spared the females.  The women continued speaking their own tongue and taught it to their daughters, but the sons learned their fathers’ language.  In time, both males and females learned both languages.

“It is true,” says the Jesuit Father Rochefort, in his Histoire des Antilles, “that the Caribs have degenerated from the virtues of their ancestors, but it is also true that the Europeans, by their pernicious examples, their ill-treatment of them, their villainous deceit, their dastardly breaking of every promise, their pitiless plundering and burning of their villages, their beastly violation of their girls and women, have taught them, to the eternal infamy of the name of Christian, to lie, to betray, to be licentious, and other vices which they knew not before they came in contact with us.”