Before the arrival of European explorers, the Guianas were populated by scattered bands of Arawak Indians. The native tribes of the Northern Amazon are most closely related to the natives of the Caribbean; most evidence suggests that the Arawaks immigrated from the Orinoco and Essequibo River Basin in Venezuela and Guiana into the northern islands, and were then supplanted (and, occasionally, eaten) by more warlike tribes of Carib Indians, who departed from these same river valleys a few centuries later. Over the centuries of the pre-Columbian era, the ebb and flow of power between Arawak and Carib interests throughout the Caribbean resulted in a great deal of intermingling (some forced through capture, some accidental through contact). This ethnic mixing, particularly in the Caribbean mar