Igneri
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The Igneri were an Indigenous Arawakan-speaking people of the southern Lesser Antilles in the Caribbean. Historically, it was believed that the Igneri were conquered and displaced by the Kalinago in an invasion some time before European contact. However, linguistic and archaeological studies in the 20th century have led scholars to more nuanced theories as to the fate of the Igneri. The Igneri spoke an Arawakan language which transitioned into the Kalinago language.
History
The Caribbean was populated in various waves, several of which produced varying and often successive archaeological cultures. It is not clear which sites and cultures may be related to the Igneri. Archaeologist Irving Rouse associated them with the Suazoid culture, which emerged around AD 1000 in the Lesser Antilles as a continuation of the earlier Saladoid culture. The Suazoid culture lasted until around 1450, which may reflect the transition from Igneri to Kalinago culture in the islands.
Kalinago connections
The Igneri are known from the traditions of the Kalinago, who lived in the Lesser Antilles at the time of European contact. According to these traditions, the Igneri were the original inhabitants of the islands, while the Kalinago were invaders originating in South America (home to the Kalina people or mainland Caribs). By these accounts, the Kalinago conquered and displaced the Igneri. As this tradition was widespread and internally consistent, it was accepted as historical by Europeans. An invasion would explain cultural differences between the Kalinago and their Arawakan-speaking neighbors in the Greater Antilles, the Taíno, as well as some peculiarities of Kalinago culture, in particular the fact that male and female Kalinago were noted as speaking different languages from at least the 17th century. This was explained as an effect of the invasion: according to this interpretation, incoming Kalinago men took captured Arawakan-speaking women as wives, and thus the women spoke an Arawakan tongue while the men presumably spoke a Cariban language.
However, linguistic analysis in the 20th century determined that the main Island Carib language was spoken by both sexes, and was Arawakan, not Cariban. As such, scholars have adopted more nuanced theories to explain the transition from Igneri to Kalinago in the Antilles. Irving Rouse proposed that a relatively small scale Kalinago force conquered but did not displace the Igneri, and the invaders eventually took on the Igneri language while still maintaining their identity as Kalinago. Other scholars such as Sued Badillo doubt there was an invasion at all, proposing that the Igneri adopted the "Kalinago" identity over time due to their close economic and political relations with the rising mainland Kalina polity. Both theories accept that the historical Kalinago language developed from the existing tongue of the islands, and thus it is also known as Igneri.
The idea that Kalinago men and women spoke different languages arises from the fact that by at least the early 17th century, Kalinago men spoke a Cariban-based pidgin language in addition to the usual Arawakan language used by both sexes. This was similar to pidgins used by Kalina people when communicating with their Lokono neighbors. Berend J. Hoff and Douglas Taylor hypothesized that it dated to the time of the Carib expansion through the islands, and that males maintained it to emphasize their origins on the mainland. Alternately, if there was no Carib invasion, the pidgin may have been a later development acquired through mainland contacts.
Further reading
- Hill, Jonathan David; Santos-Granero, Fernando (2002). . University of Illinois Press. ISBN 0252073843.
- Lenik, Stephan (2012). "Carib as a Colonial Category: Comparing Ethnohistoric and Archaeological Evidence from Dominica, West Indies". Ethnohistory. 59 (1): 79–107. doi:.
- Whitehead, Neil L. (December 1998). "The Indigenous People of the Caribbean". American Anthropologist. 100 (4): 1046–1047. doi:. ISSN .