Chalirati

 

Whilst randomly searching through the Drake Manuscript online for another topic, we came across a familiar animal. Called chalirati here, we suspect it to be a deformation of a Kalinago word for the ray, Chibáli. According to Breton's dictionary, the word was also used to describe the arrows made using the tail of this animal. By the 1600s, the word for the arrow made from the tail of this ray was also used to describe mixed-race people born to Indian men and black women among the Caribs, chibárali. Yet for blacks without any Amerindian admixture, the word used for them was the Kalinago term for the black triggerfish, chiboulli. Why the term for a mixed Black/Indian person was the same as that used for an arrow tipped with the tail of a venomous ray is not clear, but could have been connected to the skin color of such individuals and the ray in question? Based on the Drake Manuscript, it seems to have been brownish in color? 

We are still curious about the other terms used by the Kalinago for mixed-race blacks. One term, cachionna, which may be linked etymologically to the Arawakan-derived term for the Sun among the "Island Caribs." This word was used for children born to white men and black women, as well as Indian men and black women.