Kalina (Carib)

The Kalina, called mainland Caribs, people the rivers and coasts of the Guiana shield: Venezuela, Guyana, Suriname, French Guiana and Brazil. They speak Carib, a Cariban language possibly kin to the island Kalinago although the tongues differ. Fishers, hunters and bitter-manioc farmers, the Kalina moved by war canoe along a coast Europeans feared, raiding Arawak towns and trading greenstone muiraquita frogs far inland. Dutch, French and English posts could neither conquer nor ignore them; alliances shifted with the price of axes, beads and guns. War-canoe fleets once closed the whole Guiana coast to Spanish sails, and five Guianas hold Kalina villages today, where Carib speech still opens meetings on every river. The colonial centuries thinned and scattered the villages, but riverside Kalina communities endure in all five Guianas today, carving war clubs and cassava graters, dancing the maraca rites and teaching Carib in village schools against the tide of Creole and Portuguese.