by Philip B. Hildebrand
It had taken ten hours of tough pounding through ocean waves to reach Cabo Viejo, as remote in Nicaragua as you can get. I had chosen this place for its Miskito origins and heritage, to understand better the history and culture of Nicaragua’s Atlantic coast. I was searching for that special kind of truth that comes from being a witness, rather than solely a student of words
My hammock hung a few feet above dark waters as I studied my surroundings and remembered what I had read. I thought of what had occurred in these lands and waters over the past 500 years. I recalled the survivors’ chilling accounts of how nature and man twice destroyed everything that I could see from where I lay.
A new day was rising up from the ocean. The sky lightened and the brightly painted houses along the shore began to show their colors. I was in the extreme northeastern corner of Nicaragua, in the department of RAAN (Region Autonoma del Atlantico Norte), a few kilometers from Cabo Gracias a Dios at the mouth of the Rio Coco. It was on the banks of the Rio Coco that children ran from me in fear, having never previously even heard of white men.
From here, four hours of ocean travel southward are required to reach Bismuna Lagoon, the beginning of the rough dirt road leading to the outside world. There is literally no place in all of Nicaragua that is further away by road from Managua than is Bismuna.
The RAAN
The Miskitos homelands are in RAAN and stretch north into Honduras. The RAAN area is a wet coastal lowland plain cut by large rivers including the Rio Coco, the largest in all of Central America. It contains the second largest tropical rainforest in the Western Hemisphere after Brazil. The region has a vast swamp and old growth rainforest with countless species of vegetation, animals, reptiles, birds and insects.
This area awaits the coming of eco-tourism. There is only a handful of hospedajes outside of Puerto Cabezas and virtually no tourist-related information exists. To date, only the Indians who have lived here for a thousand years and a cast of assorted do-gooders, adventurers, pirates and plunderers have traveled these lands and waters. This can be a wild and dangerous place, in the past frequently raked by hurricanes and racked by war.
There are essentially only two roads in RAAN. A 515 kilometer road stretching to Managua and the other running north from Puerto Cabezas to the Rio Coco. Ten years ago, the region had no passable roads. Eighty percent of the region’s population is Miskito Indians, most of whom live in small isolated communities. The rest are Sumo Indians, Creoles, and Mestizos. Likely less than a dozen whites call the region their home.
The Miskitos
Miskitos are a unique people whose history commands respect. They were once a small band of wandering warriors from Cabo Viejo traveling in dugout canoes carrying lances and poison arrows. By the 1800s, they had achieved dominance over all eastern tribes from Honduras to Panama. In all of Central America, only the Mayans ever ruled more land than the Miskitos. The story of how this small band came to control much of Central America’s Atlantic coast is a fascinating tale.
Some 1,200 years ago, warriors from Columbia’s Chibchan tribe began to migrate into eastern Nicaragua and Honduras. The fiercest and most powerful of these populated the area around Cabo Viejo lagoon. They flourished in the ocean, pine savannas, rainforests and rivers that make up these lands. They learned to roam the jungles and navigate the wild rivers while avoiding snakes, crocodiles, ocelots, jaguars, alligators and other deadly perils. They could lance, spear and harpoon with unmatched skill on land or sea. They became world-renowned mariners and fishermen able to sail dugouts in rough seas in search of sharks and green turtles. They had sufficient war-like instincts to defeat all intruders. This band would become the Miskito Indians.
Foreigners Arrive
On the morning of September 12, 1502, after days of slowly moving along the north coast of Honduras against strong trade winds from the east, Columbus rounded the mouth of the Rio Coco. He anchored in the lee of the Cape in the calmer waters off Cabo Viejo. His appreciation for finally rounding this headland was manifested in the name he bestowed on it: Cabo Gracias a Dios (Thank God Cape), a name that remains to this day. Miskito history tells a slightly different story. They claim to have led Columbus to safety after finding him lost along the northern Honduras coast with one vessel shipwrecked.
It was not until 1633 that the first permanent European settlement was built on the coast. In this year, the British Providence Company established a full-time trading post at Cabo Viejo. Europeans never conquered this region but did find many uses for its abundant resources. The timber was valued for ship construction and its numerous lagoons were used as hiding places from which to pounce on Spanish ships.
Edward Teach, known as Blackbeard, Francois L’Ollonais and Captain Edward Mansfield were among the most notoriously brutal pirates who plundered and scuttled many a Spanish ship along this coast. In 1780, a youthful Horatio Nelson used Miskito Indians to assist in his unsuccessful attempt to sack the Spanish town of Granada.
Due to their coastal location and the resulting contact with the British, the Indians from Cabo Viejo became one of Central America’s first acculturated indigenous groups. From the English, they acquired firearms and knowledge of new warfare techniques. These were the specific tools needed to gain supremacy over other tribes who populated inland areas and who shied away from contact with outsiders. In fact, the word Miskito is generally considered to be derived from musket.
As the Miskitos overpowered other Indians, they occasionally ate captives or sold them as slaves to the English. More frequently, they assimilated others as Miskitos. Due to their ready acceptance of foreigners, Miskito culture constantly evolved by biological admixtures and new knowledge. In the seventeenth century, there were major changes in Miskito society due to mixing with buccaneers and traders and, in the 1640’s, with African black survivors from a slave ship that wrecked near Cabo Viejo.
The English and Miskito
The special English-Miskito synergism that began at Cabo Viejo remained in effect for 250 years and was a cornerstone of Miskito expansionism while providing the English with a valuable ally in a hostile sea of Spanish influence. The Miskitos were of such assistance to the British in thwarting the Spanish that in 1687, the British crowned a Miskito chief as King Jeremy and the entire coast was placed under the protectorate of the British crown. In 1740, the British denoted the region as The Kingdom of Mosquitia.
As the centuries progressed, Miskitos and English jointly expanded their influence and by mid-1800, virtually all the Nicaraguan Atlantic coast was under the control of the English-Miskito coalition. This mutually beneficial relationship between strong cultures from the Old and New Worlds stood in sharp contrast to that between the Spanish and other Indian tribes. Indeed, it stood in contrast to the relationships that were established by European nations and indigenous groups throughout the entire Western Hemisphere.
British protection lasted until the land was relinquished to Nicaragua in 1860 with the commitment that it would be a self-governing region. This commitment was not fulfilled and in 1894, the region was forcedly incorporated into Nicaragua.
The Miskito’s close relationship with things originally English, and later American, continues to this day. As one Miskito once explained, “English has historically been the language of business and everyone knows it brings good things. But to us, the Spanish language means exploitation and war.”
Recent History
On the night of September 9, 1971, 290 kilometer-per-hour Hurricane Edith put the community of Cabo Viejo under 20 feet of water while driving ocean vessels many kilometers inland. Destruction, when it came next, was from man. It was also swift and brutal. In April 1982, during the Miskito-Sandinista War, the communists burned the community to the ground killing almost every living thing and moving the survivors into internment camps.
Virtually all Miskito men on the Atlantic coast took up arms against the leftist government and waged a bloody no-holds-barred civil war in the jungles of northeastern Nicaragua throughout the 1980s. The Sandinistas eventually asked for peace and offered autonomy that the region now enjoys. In 2001, the Atlantic coast had its first local elections for the regional government.
While thinking about this intriguing history, I looked out at Cabo Viejo lagoon’s glassy black surface being cut by the silhouette of a solitary Miskito paddling his dugout. The morning stillness was suddenly shattered by a deep hollow sound resonating from the conch shell he blew announcing his safe return from the sea. Perhaps 500 years ago, Columbus also observed a similar scene in this place. I felt with certainty that these people are timeless survivors who will always be at one with this land. In my journey here, I had found the witness’s truth that I had sought.
