8e THE TEEMS “ OAEIB” AXB “ CATfS,IBAL.” 
warlike ; but we must also admit that these cruelties were 
exaggerated by the early travellers, who heard only the nar- 
ratives of the old enemies of the Caribs. It is not always 
the vanquished solely, who are calumniated by their contem- 
poraries ; tlie insolence of the conquerors is punished by the 
catalogue of their crimes being augmented. 
All the missionaries of the Carony, the Lower Oi’inoco, 
and the Llanos del Cari, whom wo had an opportimity of 
consuKing, assured us that the Caribs are perhaps the 
least anthropophagous nations of the New Continent. They 
extend this remark even to the independent hordes whu 
wander on the east of tlio Esmeralda, between the sources of 
the Eio Branco and the Bssequibo. It may be conceived 
that the fury and despair with which the unhappy Caribs 
defended themselves against the Spaniards, when in 1504 a 
royal decree declared them slaves, may have contributed to 
acquire for them a reputation for ferocity. The first idea of 
attacking this nation, and depriving it of liberty and of its 
natural rights, originated with Clnistopher Columbus, who 
was not in all instances so humane as he is represented to 
have been. Subsequently the licenciado Eodrigo de Figueroa 
was appointed by the court, in 1520, to determine the tribes 
of South America, who were to be regarded as of Carib 
race, or as cannibals; and those who were Guatiaos,* that 
• Iliad some trouble in discovering the origin of this denomination, 
wliich has become so important from the fatal decrees of Figueroa. Tlic 
Spanish historians often employ the word guatlao to designate a branch 
of nations. To become a gualiao of any one, seems to have signified, in 
the language of Hayti, to eonclude a treaty of friendship. In the West 
India Islands, as well as in the archipelago of the South Sea, names were 
exchanged in token of alliance. “Juan de Esquivel (1502) se hice 
guatiao del cacique Cotubanama; el qual desde adelantese llamo Juan de 
Esquivel, porque era liga de perpetua amistad entre los Indies trocarso 
los nombres : y trocados quedaban guatiaos, qnc era tanto como confede- 
rados y hermanos cn armas. Ponce de Leon se hace gxmtiao con el 
poderoso cacique Agueinaha.” — Herrera, dec. i. pp. 129, 1.59, 181. — 
[Juan de Esquivel (1502) became the guatiao of the cacique Cotubanama; 
and thenceforth the latter called himself Juan de Esquivel, for among the 
Indians, the exchange of names was a bond of perpetual friendship. 
Those who exchanged names became guatiaos, which meant the same as 
confederates or brethren-in-arms. Ponce de Leon became guatiao with 
the powerful cacique Agueinaha.] One of the Lucayes Islands, inhabited 
by a mild and pacific people, was heretofore called Guataoi but we will 
