by Philip B. Hildebrand
The extreme northeastern corner of Nicaragua sits today as it has for millennia, a low, sandy finger of land pointing into the ocean whose waves beat incessantly upon it. This is the famous Cabo Gracias a Dios at the mouth of the Río Coco, Central America’s longest river (550 km) and nearby Cabo Viejo the adjacent town and lagoon. Virtually no tourists have ever been here and few likely ever will, for it is a dangerous place, difficult to reach and offering little to the normal visitor. Over the past decade, this historic locale has become a haven for heavily-armed international drug traffickers who do not take kindly to inquisitive outsiders. I knew I had to come here.
Most of the history played out over the past 500 years on Nicaragua’s Atlantic Coast and indeed in the entire country, originated in these lands and waters. By some twist of fate, when the Miskito Indians, Spanish, English, and Blacks first arrived in Nicaragua, they did so at this exact spot. The resulting struggles and alliances between these divergent groups forged the country we know today.
To me, an understanding of Nicaraguan history requires experiencing this place. The land is so tough and full of natural dangers that I clearly understood how only a strong people could call it home. Having rounded Cape Gracias a Dios, I knew why Columbus was so relieved to find the calm waters in its lee. It was also easy to see the natural protection and attractiveness that Cabo Viejo Lagoon had for the English and how fortunate the Black survivors must have felt to be washed up on this soft shoreline. Witnessing this place is much more profound than merely reading about it.
Miskito Indians, then the Spaniards
The first to come were the Indians. While time has obscured the record of their arrival, some 1,200 years ago, wandering members of Columbia’s Chibchan tribe migrated up the eastern coast of Central America into present day Nicaragua and Honduras. A small band of them settled around Cabo Viejo Lagoon where for hundreds of years they lived from the riches of the surrounding sea, rivers, and land. This band would eventually grow sufficiently powerful to fend off all invaders and attained dominion over all other tribes along the coast and far inland. They would become known to the white man as Miskitos.
Some 700 years after the Indians arrived, the Spanish showed up off Cabo Viejo. On the morning of September 12, 1502, after days of frustration beating along the north coast of Honduras against the strong northeasterly trade winds, Christopher Columbus rounded the mouth of the Río Coco. His appreciation for finally passing this headland is shown by the name he bestowed on it: Cabo Gracias a Dios (Thank God Cape).
Avelena Cox, a well-respected Miskito historian and writer, told me a different story. He claims that the Indians from Cabo Viejo led Columbus to safety after finding him lost along the northern coast of Honduras with one vessel damaged. Little did they know that they were aiding those who for hundreds of years afterward would be their nemesis. The Spanish who followed Columbus were unsuccessful in taking over the area and since it had no gold or valuable resources, they concentrated on conquering from the Pacific side.
When the English first established a permanent presence in Nicaragua some 140 years after Columbus, it was at Cabo Viejo. The lagoon has now silted in, but 400 years ago it was a deep harbor able to accommodate oceangoing vessels. In July 1633, colonialists with the Providence Company came here and built the first permanent English trading post on the mainland. Their orders were explicitly to respect the Indians and deal with them in a fair and honest manner. The initial friendly relations that began in Cabo Viejo were the beginning of a special bond between the Miskitos and English-speaking people that continues to this day.
In the 1640s, a little over ten years after the English came to Cabo Viejo, the Blacks arrived on the scene when a ship carrying West African slaves blew onto the soft sandy beach nearby. Interestingly, the first French pirate ship to arrive in Nicaraguan waters in the 1600s also came here and subsequently the Miskitos developed a relationship with the French and for years worked with them frequently against the Spanish.
Assimilation and War
By the mid 1600s, the stage was set and the interactions of these actors over subsequent centuries produced the uniquely Nicaraguan character of today. The Spanish plundered and exterminated, the English traded and utilized, and the Indians learned and grew.
What is most interesting is the surprisingly sophisticated manner in which the Indians acted and how they took advantage of the opportunities fate gave them. Within a short time they had assimilated the survivors from the slave ship and Blacks disappeared as a distinct group until long afterwards. The Indian-Black racial mixture produced a strong new form of Miskito who quickly understood how to work with the English and learn from them while exploiting their rivalry with the Spanish.
Due to their coastal location, the Miskitos had ongoing contacts with the English and French. From these Europeans they acquired firearms and new warfare techniques which they used to gain supremacy over less sophisticated inland tribes. As natural mariners, they proved valuable crew members who sailed and fought alongside the English on the oceans of the world. The word Miskito was not used until about 1680 and is generally considered to be derived from the word musket.
Miskito Expansionism
The English-Miskito cooperation that began at Cabo Viejo became the basis of Miskito expansionism. This mutually beneficial relationship stood in sharp contrast to that between almost every other Old and New World culture. Throughout most of American history, indigenous tribes shrunk and became weaker when confronted with a major European power, but the opposite occurred with the Miskitos.
The band of warriors from Cabo Viejo succeeded in learning from the English, assimilating all other tribes and using their new knowledge to fight the Spanish. This combination enabled them to become one of Central America’s most powerful tribes. The band that in the mid-1600s numbered less than 100, had 200 years later gained dominance over all east coast natives from Honduras to Panama. In all of Central America, the Mayans were the only indigenous people who ever controlled more territory.
The Spanish took over Nicaragua from the west where they promptly set about exterminating native peoples. A similar fate would have befallen the Miskitos were it not for the presence of the English and the jungle separating them. Having understood the treatment of other indigenous people, the Miskitos relished fighting the Spanish and did so either with the English or on their own.
No Spanish town accessible from the Caribbean as far south as Panama and as far north as Belize was safe from attack by a Miskito war party. In Nicaragua, they attacked Granada, Matagalpa, cities in the north of the country and as far inland as Rivas. These attacks continued even after the English and Spanish settled their differences and were so prevalent that in the mid-1700s the Spanish lodged a formal protest in London against them. By tradition, Miskitos assimilated captured prisoners, but the Spanish were treated differently, usually killed or, as some reports indicate, occasionally eaten.
In the 1600s, the English made the entire east coast of modern day Nicaragua a protectorate of the British Crown. This protection lasted until the land was relinquished to Nicaragua in 1860 with a signed treaty in which Nicaragua promised to allow the region to be self-governing by the Miskitos. This promise was broken in 1894 when the regime in Managua invaded the Atlantic Coast and forcibly incorporated it into Nicaragua, an act that causes resentment in the region to this day. To show their contempt for the Indians, the powers in Managua named Puerto Cabezas in honor of Rigoberto Cabezas, the general who supervised the invasion. Miskitos prefer their name of Bilwi.
1980s Miskito-Spanish Civil War
Miskitos were not involved in the Sandinista insurrection and there were no battles on the Atlantic Coast. To them, it was an inconsequential Spanish affair. However, soon after coming to power, the Sandinistas began threatening the Miskitos, jailing many of their key leaders and trying to replace ancient traditions with communist dogma. The results of this heavy handedness were as predictable as the sun rising in the east. The Miskitos went to war. The Sandinistas burned Cabo Viejo and all towns along the entire Río Coco and far to the south to the ground. Thousands of Indians were killed and the survivors were forced into resettlements inland, far from their traditional way of life near bodies of water. War raged in the jungles of northeastern Nicaragua throughout much of the 1980s and, as in the past, Indians sought help from those who speak English, this time the Americans. Until the Sandinistas negotiated peace, the Miskitos’ greatest ally was US President Reagan whose military assistance made their struggle world famous and who once publicly proclaimed “I am a Miskito Indian.”
The Rock
For years, I lived among the Miskito people of northeastern Nicaragua. To better understand how they could have defied the odds for so long, I weathered backbreaking hours of pounding through the windswept ocean to reach Cabo Gracias a Dios.
The tough ex-jungle fighter and now judge of Cabo Viejo allowed me to sleep on his porch where early one dark morning, Venus rising in the east woke me. I rose and watched a solitary Indian paddling his dugout canoe across the smooth black surface of this historic lagoon. Suddenly the morning stillness was shattered by the deep hollow sound resonating from the conch shell he blew announcing his safe return from the sea. This action is a tradition stretching back in time. It was over 700 years ago when the first white man to get here, Columbus, heard it. Likely no other tradition in all of Nicaragua has remained unchanged for so long or is more representative of a people. To me it seemed a proclamation for all to hear that the Miskitos spring from this land and all that it contains.
The other actors in the drama that began centuries ago around Cabo Gracias a Dios have now retired from the scene, except for the Black Creoles and a small Garifuna population, leaving the Miskitos and the Spanish as to determine the future of this part of the country. Anywhere I have been in northeastern Nicaragua, Miskitos invariably refer to people from the rest of the country as Spanish and those they call Spanish are still intent on exploiting them. As an old Miskito friend once told me, “To us, English brings good things, but Spanish means exploitation and war.” This independently-minded region occupies over half of Nicaragua’s land area and continental shelf with most of the minerals, seafood, timber, petroleum, hydroelectric power, and other resources that the country looks to for its future well-being. Yet a mutual lack of understanding and respect continues unabated, transcending politics and daily events. It has truly become Nicaragua’s rock in the river of time.
