Karaphuna Canoes by Philip Thorneycroft Teuscher The sea itself was named for themthese warlike, copper-skinned Carib people who came from Central American jungles to conquer and intermingle with the peaceful Arawaks who inhabited the Greater and Lesser Antilles in the Caribbean Sea. Within a hundred years the Spanish arrived, and so began the painful attrition of this fierce, resistant people, who today survive only in a settlement on the iron bound coast ofthe island of Dominica. To Dominica came Philip Teuscher, film maker and student of maritime history, who lived with a Carib family while making a documentary film of their seagoing culture.-ED. Who they were and where they came from are not written history. Their legend tells of a chief named Kallinago, "small in body but great in mind," who led his warriors across the sea. The Karaphuna , as they call themselves, used a dugout which they called a "kanawa "-from which we get our word "canoe ." Today on the Windward Island of Dominica two tangible links with the PreColumbian Caribbean exist. These are the handful of Carib survivors who still navigate in "kanawa" identical to those Columbus observed when he discovered Dominica, or Sunday Island, m November 1493 . While filming these people , who are the only surviving natives of the Caribbean archipelago, I witnessed and documented a tradition of canoe building and navigation that soon may become on1y a memory. Carib fishermen launch their canoes at daybreak from the boulder-strewn Atlantic coast of the island. At dawn they can catch the offshore breeze that whisks them out to sea before the tradewind pipes up in the forenoon. At about three in the afternoon they run for home with the northeast tradewind pushing them toward Dominica' s steep-to shoreline. If the trades are blowing a fresh breeze the thundering surf turns the rocky islets and exposed landing places into a maelstrom. The canoes are visible offshore as white specks appearing and disappearing on the heaving swells. A couple of cable lengths off the beach the sailors douse the sail and unstep the mast. Oars are fitted in thole pins and while two Caribs row a third steers and bails. Hovering just outside the breaker line , they throw overboard their boulder ballast and prepare for just the right wave. Then , rowing like hell , they surf ashore bouncing up the inclined landing place. Before the following wave has a chance to dash the canoe SEA HIS1DRY, SPRING 1983
Caribsfishing on a peacefal day, in a canoe of planks built up on a hollowed-out log . Photos, Teuscher!Pettys Productions. Below, Hilary Frederick, chief of all Caribs, raises glass to guests; from left to right, his mother, chauffeur "Shicks", and.filmmakers Teuscher and Greg Pettys.
onlookers rush to grab the vessel and fetch it out of harm 's way. Thus is repeated a scene that has not changed since Kallinago and his roving Karaphuna first stepped ashore on ''Waitukubuli " as they called Dominica. The Carib canoe builder uses the same methods as his Karaphuna ancestors. Today , however, the tools are of steel instead of stone. A gommier tree is felled in the mountainside forest where it is partially shaped and hollowed to lighten it. With generous inducements of free rum a canoe builder enveigles his friends to help him drag the embryonic canoe to the shore . This celebration, wailing the birth of a canoe, is an ancient Karaphuna tradition. The log is further shaped and hollowed and then widened thusly : A wedgeshaped mound of stones is placed inside and the log is filled with water. Fires are built outside the hull , heating and softening the sides. The combined forces open the dugout and thwarts are affixed to maintain the beam . A plank is added to both sides to bring the free board higher . In ancient times these were lashed with '' mahot'' cordage to the main log . Today , nails are used. Kallinago and his crew paddled their canoes which were up to 60 feet in length . Today the average size is 18 feet and they are rowed or rigged with a sprit-rigged sail. When Columbus arrived on the Caribbean scene the seagoing natives were ignorant of the use of sails. How they adopted and rigged sails for their canoes is suggested in this entry in the log 'of an English ship coasting off Dominica in the seventeenth century : Having stayed heare (Island of St. Lucia) three dayes, about the two and twentieth of October (1606) we departed thence to the Northward. And in passing by the Ile of Dominica, wee chanced to see a white Flag put forth on the shoare, whereat marvelling, wee supposed that some Christians had sustained shipwrack their. And Forthwith a Cannoa came off from the shoare towards us, which when they came neere, being very little wind , we layed our Ship by the lee and stayed for them a little, and when they were come within a little distance of the Ship, wee perceived in the Cannoa a Friar, who cried aloud in the Larine tongue, say ing, I
beseech, as you are Christians , for Christ his sake to shew some mercy and compassion on mee, I am a Preacher of the Work of God , A Friarofthe OrderofFranciscus in Sivill, by name Friar Blasius. And that he had been there sixteene moneths a Slave unto those Savages; and that other two Friars which were of his company they had murthered and throwne into the Sea. We demanded of him then , how he got so much favour to preserve his life , hi s Brethren being murthered: Hee answered, because hee did shew the Savages how to fit them Sayles for their Cannoas, and so to ease them of much labour often in rowing, which greatly pleased the Savages as appeared , for wee saw them to use say les in their Cannoas , which hathe not beene scene before. Then we demanded of him where they had this Linnen Cloth to make those Sayles ; He answered , That about two yeeres before that, three Gallions coming to the West Indies were cast away on the Ile of Gwadalopa, where abundance of Linnen Cloth and other Merchandise was cast on shore ...
The canoes that once ferried the conquering Karaphuna are now used for fishing, transport and smuggling between the French and English Antilles . The last remnant Island Caribs on Dominica today are now confronting pressures to change after almost 500 years of struggle to survive. Will the Carib survive or will the bones of this culture be added to the fast mounting heap left in the wake of civilization? The question may be answered in this generation. .t
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