Buccaneer

Buccanier, (bük'kah-neer.) [From Carib. Ind. bou can, smoked meat.] (Hist.) A name applied to those piratical adventurers, or filibusters, chiefly English and French, who, in the 17th cent., committed great depredations and atrocities upon the Spaniards in the W. Indies and Central America. They had their chief rendezvous in the island of Tobago, and were gradually exterminated about the beginning of the 18th cent. The name is derived, as above, from a practice of preserving meat, without salt, taught the French settlers in San Domingo by the aborigines, whence the caters of such flesh were called Boucaniers. [s. 120]