The word buccaneer is derived from the French "boucanier", which roughly
translates as "someone who smokes meat" and which in turn comes from
the native American "bukan". During the early seventeenth century, a
large number of exiled French, Dutch, and English people in the
Caribbean would hunt wild animals on the islands and smoke the meat for
selling to merchants. When the Spanish attempted to exile them from the
island of Hispaniola, they responded by conducting surprise raids on
Spanish ships taking treasure from the new world back to Europe.