ABSTRACT
The term Carib has been so loosely employed by all early writers that it has grown to be almost the common designation for all aborigines of the West Indian Islands and of the neighbouring mainland. Humboldt speaks of them as an active people, commercial and warlike, carrying their wares from the coasts of Dutch Guiana to the basin of the Amazon, and regards them as having inhabited the sources of the Essequibo and the Branco from time immemorial. In 1724 the Essequibo records take up the story; some of the nation were then, like the Akawois, living under the protection of the Dutch and were a source of great advantage to the colony. Throughout Sampaio's description of the Rio Negro there are very frequent allusions to the erstwhile power in that river of the Manaos and their relations with the Dutch, and these are corroborated in detail by older Portuguese documents.
