Another theory of the origin of the Caribs is that advanced by M. d’Orbigny, who, after eight years of travel over the South American continent, published the result of his researches in Paris in 1834.  He considers them to be a branch of the great Guarani family.  And the Jesuit missionaries, Fathers Raymond and Dutertre, who lived many years among the Antillean Caribs, concluded from their traditions that they were descended from a people on the continent named Galibis, who, according to M. d’Orbigny, were a branch of the Guaranis.

But the Guaranis, though a very wide-spread family of South American aborigines, were neither a conquering nor a wandering race.  They occupied that part of the continent situated between the rivers Paraguay and Parana, from where these two rivers join the river Plate, northward, to about latitude 22 deg. south.  This region was the home of the Guaranis, a people indolent, sensual, and peaceful, among whom the Jesuits, in the eighteenth century founded a religious republic, which toward the end of that period counted 33 towns with a total population of over one hundred thousand souls.  A glance at the map will show the improbability of any Indian tribe, no matter how warlike, making its way from the heart of the continent to the Orinoco through 30 deg. of primitive forests, mountains, and rivers, inhabited by hostile tribes.[91]

The French missionaries who lived many years with the Caribs of Guadeloupe and the other French possessions, do not agree on the subject of their origin.  Fathers Dutertre and Raymond believe them to be the descendants of the Galibis, a people inhabiting Guiana.  Fathers Rochefort, Labat, and Bristol maintain that they are descended from the Apalaches who inhabited the northern part of Florida.  Humboldt is of the same opinion, and suggests that the name Carib may be derived from Calina or Caripuna through transformation of the letters l and p into r and b, forming Caribi or Galibi.[92] Pedro Martyr strongly opposes this opinion, the principal objection to which is that a tribe from the North American continent invading the West Indies by way of Florida would naturally occupy the larger Antilles before traveling east and southward.  Under this hypothesis, as we have said, all the inhabitants of the Antilles would be Caribs, but in that case the difference in the character of the inhabitants of the two divisions of the archipelago would have to be accounted for.

Most of the evidence we have been able to collect on this subject points to a south-continental origin of the Caribs.  On the maps of America, published in 1587 by Abraham Ortellus, of Antwerp, in 1626 by John Speed, of London, and in 1656 by Sanson d’Abbeville in Paris, the whole region to the north of the Orinoco is marked Caribana.  In the history of the Dutch occupation of Guiana we read that hostile Caribs occupied a shelter[93] constructed in 1684 by the governor on the borders of the Barima, which shows that the vast region along the Orinoco and its tributaries, as well as the lesser Antilles, was inhabited by an ethnologically identical race.