Garifuna

The Garinagu (singular and adjective - Garifuna) are an afro-indigenous ethnic group living primarily along the Caribbean coast of Central America.  The Garinagu are descended from West Africans brought to the Americas to be enslaved.  They escaped a shipwreck in the Caribbean and intermarried with an already mixed Amerindian group, the Carib-Arawak people, living on the island of St. Vincent.  These Amerindian people were comprised of Arawak women and Carib men, from two distinct indigenous groups originating in South America, who migrated independently to the Caribbean.  The people resulting from the intermarriage of West African, Arawak, and Carib, were the Garinagu.  Europeans distinguised the Black Caribs from the Red or Yellow Caribs, who were not descendents of intermarriages with West Africans.  In 1797, the British permanently exiled the Black Caribs to the island of Roatan, off the coast of Honduras, and from there they spread to mainland Central America.