CARIBAN, one of the important linguistic stocks of South American Indians ; the name is derived from the Caribs, the warlike and widely raiding Indians met first by Columbus in the Lesser Antilles and adjacent coast of Venezuela. The name Carib probably means "strangers." The Carib tribes in this region, where they were first met, were relatively recent invaders, having con quered and largely absorbed or driven out the older Arawakan (q.v.) inhabitants.
Tribes of this stock held, at the time of the first European contact, most of Vene zuela north of the Orinoco river, and west ward to the present border of Colombia, possibly penetrating as far as the lower Magdalena. They held most of the interior of the Guianas and the region southwards to the Amazon. Scattered tribes of this stock are found as far west as the Guaques on the headwaters of the Caqueta river in Colombia, while others, such as the Apiaca and Pimenteiras were on the Tocantins and Paranhyba rivers in north-eastern Brazil. The Bakairi on the head-waters of the Xingu in Matto Grosso were the southern most tribe, and this region of the Brazilian Bolivian border is believed to have been the centre from which the Cariban tribes originally spread.
The Cariban tribesmen were somewhat taller than the Ara wakan (q.v.) but like them were prevailingly brachycephalic or round-headed. They sometimes had wavy hair. They were gen erally warlike, and often markedly cannibalistic, yet their general culture was on a par with that of their neighbours. In the Carib bean region they were excellent canoe-makers, and were one of the few peoples in the New World to employ sails.
See for lists of Cariban tribes, L. Adam, Materiaux pour servir a l'etablissment d'une grammaire comparee des dialectes de la Famille Caribe (Paris, 1893) ; T. Koch-Gruneberg, Die Hianakoto-Umaua (Anthropos, 1908 vol. iii., pp.