r 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."

Father Dutertre declares that at the time of the arrival of the
Europeans the Caribs were contented, happy, and sociable. Physically
they were