American Indian people who inhabited the Lesser Antilles and parts of the South American coast at the time of the Spanish conquest. The Island Carib (now extinct) were a warlike, individualistic people who reportedly practiced cannibalism (the term derives from their name). Carib groups on the mainland, some of whom still survive, lived in the Guianas and as far south as the Amazon River; they subsisted by hunting and growing crops and were less aggressive than their island relatives