As we have said, these Goajiros appear to be a family of the Carib group, but while they remain where they were at the time of the conquest, their relations eastward have been driven southwards or absorbed by the white races, just as they themselves at an earlier date drove back the aborigines, who now, with them, people the forests of Guayana. The Caribs probably spoke more than one dialect when they first invaded the mainland from the islands of the Caribbean, but now the number of the tribes and languages considered by Señor Tavera-Acosta to belong to the group is about thirty, including the following: Caribe, Tamanaco, Otomak, Maquiritare or Uayungomo (also spelt Guayungomo and Waiomgomo. In every case for names beginning with U there is the alternative spelling with the unsounded Spanish G, and B and V are interchangeable), Maco or Macapure, Cuacua or Mapoyo, Taparita, Uiquire or Uiquiare, Pauare, Pareca, Uayamara, Cadupinapo, Curasicana, Yabarana, Arecuna, Macusi, Uaica, and others of minor importance. The members of these tribes were those who, like the Goajiros, fought most stoutly for their independence when they saw it menaced by the _conquistadores_. These patriots, superior in many respects, as we have seen, to their foes, were characterised by the European invaders as cannibals, vicious and degraded, and the Jesuits later, in their holy zeal for souls (_conquista espiritual_) were no less harsh in their judgments on those who naturally resented the separation of parents from children and husband from wife and the general atrocities of the self-styled Christians who thus endeavoured to forcibly convert them. In reality they were then, what they still are where unspoilt by “civilisation,” a fine race physically, brave and intelligent, possessing, no doubt, the vices of savagery, but also its virtues. The charges of cannibalism brought by the European exploiters of the New World (who had the vices of civilisation and barbarism combined, without the virtues of either) were either entirely baseless, or due to the ignorance which mistook the limbs of monkeys, which the Indians were always accustomed to eat, for those of men. As we have seen (Chapter IV.), the only substantiated cases of cannibalism occurred among the _conquistadores_ themselves.