The Garifuna or Garífuna are an ethnic group in the Caribbean area, decended from a mix of Native American and African people. They are also sometimes known as Garifune or Black Caribs.
In 1635, two Spanish ships carrying slaves to the West Indies from what is now Nigeria were ship-wrecked near the island of Saint Vincent. The slaves escaped the sinking boat and reached the shores of the island, where they were welcomed by the Carib Indians, who offered their protection. Their intermarriage formed the Garinagu people, known as the Garifuna today. The name was derived from a phrase meaning "people who eat cassava".
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The history of the Garifuna, however, began long before the year 1635. Saint Vincent was inhabited by a tribe of Indians who called themselves Arawaks. On arriving on the island Carib Indians fought and defeated the Arawak Indians. The Arawak men were all killed and the Kalipuna (Caribe) warriors took the Arawak women as wives. The inhabitants of the island were then the result of the union of these two tribes. Because of this, the Garifuna speak an Arawak-based language and not a Carib-based language.
The Caribs continued hostilities and, with the aid of the French recaptured the island in 1779, but it was returned to British sovreignity in 1783 by the same Treaty of Versailles which ended the American Revolution.
It is the Yellow and BlackCaribs of history, and the Garifuna of today, who provide a role model of strength and independence that allows the people of St. Vincent to have a self-image that requires no taint of inferiority no matter how dark (or light) their complexion.
The British, being motivated to consider all the "BlackCaribs" as either escaped slaves or their descendants, probably used a criterion similar to that used by Southern Anglo Americans in the post-Civil-War period--that "one drop of African blood" made someone "Black".
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