The Caribs of Dominica

Since we have read a few of his essays on the Dominica Caribs elsewhere, we thought Douglas Taylor's The Caribs of Dominica. Though very short, it seems to be based on fieldwork in the Carib Reserve in the 1930s. It certainly reflects that older era in which Western scholars openly expressed racist and condescending views of their ethnographic subjects. Nonetheless, the material focus of this brief study highlighted how the Caribs of Dominica, even after generations of Christianization and intermarriage with the black population, retained some distinct practices of canoe-making, fishing, basketry, and traditions that give some insights into the nature of precolonial indigenous social practices. For our purposes, however, it would likely be more fruitful to revisit and read Rochefort, Labat, and Breton, especially the bilingual dictionary from the 17th century that would shed even more light on the nature of an indigenous Caribbean people.