Indigenous Arawakan-speaking people of the southern Lesser Antilles, associated by archaeologists with the Suazoid culture (a continuation of the earlier Saladoid tradition); distinct from the Taíno of the Greater Antilles, though related in language family. Kalinago oral tradition held that the Igneri were the islands' original inhabitants before a Kalinago invasion, though modern scholarship debates whether that was a conquest, a smaller-scale takeover, or a gradual adoption of Kalinago identity.
Contested. Traditional accounts describe conquest and displacement by Kalinago invaders from the South American mainland; more recent linguistic and archaeological scholarship (Rouse; Sued Badillo) favors a gradual transition — the Suazoid culture (c. 1000-1450) shading into the historic Kalinago (Island Carib) identity of the Lesser Antilles at European contact, with the Igneri language itself becoming the base of the historic Kalinago tongue.
Places the Igneri within the broader Arawakan-speaking world and its Lesser Antilles history.
Anthology of primary accounts bearing on the Igneri-to-Kalinago transition in the Lesser Antilles.