MISKITO ADAPTATIONS TO COLONIAL EMPIRES...

MISKITO:ADAPTATIONS

TO COLONIAL EMPIRES, PAST AND PRESENT

Mary W. Helms

Portraits TOC

INTRODUCTION

In the late twentieth century the people known as the Miskito“Indians,” possibly numbering as many as 150,000 persons, areone of the largest ethnic groups in Central America.1 They

inhabit the eastern lowlands and Caribbean coastal regions ofHonduras and Nicaragua, the so-called “Mosquito Coast” of east-ern Central America.

I first learned of the existence of the Miskito Coast in the early1960s when I was a graduate student in anthropology. At thattime a member of my family, a medical doctor, was serving asdirector of a small clinic and hospital operated by the MoravianChurch in Puerto Cabezas, the major port town of the northernNicaraguan Miskito Coast, south of the Río Coco, the boundarybetween Nicaragua and Honduras. Knowing nothing aboutNicaragua or the Miskito Coast, I prevailed upon my uncle’skindness and spent a summer with his family in Puerto Cabezas,occasionally accompanying Moravian missionaries on visits tonearby Miskito villages.

On my return to the university I began to research the historyof the coast and the Miskito Indians. I pieced together the generalfeatures of colonial history and of native life during the colonialcenturies from historical reports and travelers’ accounts and reada very useful monograph of Miskito customs that had been pub-lished some thirty years earlier.2 However, no contemporaryanthropological work had been done. Consequently, when in afew years it came time to decide upon a location for fieldworkand a subject for a dissertation, a return visit to the Miskito Coastwas the logical and obvious choice. I decided to pursue a generalvillage study that would afford me the chance to observe basiceconomic, social, political, and ideological features of Miskitoeveryday life as it was in the mid-1960s. So it was that I foundmyself once more in Puerto Cabezas and, in a few weeks’ time,again with the assistance of Moravian missionaries, resident inthe Miskito community of Asang, a settlement of about six hun-dred persons located approximately two hundred miles upriveron the Nicaraguan side of the Rio Coco, a few miles short of therapids that severely reduce river travel. I lived in Asang about tenmonths (from 1964–1965), residing in the home of the Moravianlay pastor and his family (who are Miskito), learning to speakMiskito and involving myself as best I could in daily Miskito life.I describe life in Asang as I found it in the l960s, and also recount

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the considerable influence of European contact in the colonialperiod and the turmoil brought about by recent political events inNicaragua.

The Miskito are an example of what has been called a “colo-nial tribe,” meaning an ethnic population whose sense of groupidentity and many customs resulted from contact with Europeanor European-derived colonial powers.3 In fact, it is likely that thenames “Miskito” and “Mosquito Coast” are derived from seven-teenth-century Spanish, English, or French terms because thespellings used in the earliest European accounts of the coast(Mosqueto, Mosquito, Musketo, Mustique) compare closely withcontemporary European terms for musket (mosquete, mousquet,musket). As we shall see, access to guns during the seventeenthand eighteenth centuries allowed the Miskito to become the mostpowerful population on the coast.

Prior to European contact the coast was occupied by numeroussmall groups of natives who hunted, fished, and cultivated smallplots of land. In contrast with many other indigenous peoples,Western contact did not lead to the cultural disintegration of thesenative forebears of the Miskito. Neither did association withEuropean colonial agents force the Miskito to become a rural peas-antry living within a larger colonial polity, forced to pay taxes orrents or provide labor services. The Miskito have never paid taxes toa more powerful government and were never subject to forcedlabor, such as army drafts, though they have, at times, fought vigor-ously in pursuit of their own interests. In short, though the Miskitohave been strongly influenced by Western or European contacts forapproximately three hundred years, to date they have maintainedconsiderable social and cultural autonomy and political indepen-dence.

Can such autonomy continue? This question is the major issuecurrently facing the Miskito. It is particularly acute for Miskito liv-ing in eastern Nicaragua where pressures that could force them tolose valuable land and become more closely affected by laws andpolicies of the state of Nicaragua have become much more intenseas a result of the Sandinista Revolution that began in l979. Prior tothat time, however, life in eastern Nicaragua and eastern Honduras(the entire region known as La Mosquitia) was only minimallyaffected by dictates of the governments of Nicaragua andHonduras.

This extensive eastern region has long been more closely affili-ated with the Caribbean region as the western edge of the

4 PORTRAITS OF CULTURE

Caribbean Sea. As such it has also been a frontier region, geograph-ically part of the Central American mainland but historically facingto the east and the Caribbean world rather than to the rest ofCentral America lying to the west.4

The reasons for this situation are geographical and historical.The territory of Central America (Guatemala through Panama) isdivided by a central chain of mountains that runs the length ofthe land, creating a western or Pacific zone, a central mountainzone, and an eastern or Caribbean (sometimes called Atlantic)zone. Because the valleys, plains, and foothills of the westernzone are relatively dry and temperate in climate they were foundsuitable for settlement by Spanish conquistadors and colonistswho subdued the indigenous population and developed severalHispanic colonies.5 These colonies became the contemporarycountries of Central America, whose populations speak Spanishand are predominantly Roman Catholic and whose capital citiesand major population clusters are still located in the westernzone.6

The eastern zone on the other side of the mountain chain,however, is a hotter and wetter tropical lowland of forests,swamps, and savannahs. Spanish conquistadors found nothing ofinterest here, and did not settle. Instead, they long regarded theeastern regions and its native peoples as a very “savage” andinhospitable “backwoods.” Because the Spaniards ignored thisregion and because this land was adjacent to Spanish settlements,the English, long colonial competitors of the Spanish Crown,eventually became interested in the east coast as a vantage pointfor watching and sometimes harassing their Hispanic rivals.Consequently, the English became the predominant colonialpower there.7

The English presence was relatively low-key. Only a few settle-ments were established, and contacts with the local native popula-tion were basically friendly, cooperative, and mutually satisfactory.On the Miskito Coast the native peoples came to admire theEnglish and made some attempt to imitate their customs and evenlearn some English. Consequently, though the native languageremained the mother tongue, the predominant colonial languagewas English. Eventually various denominations of Protestantism,most notably (by far) the Moravian Church, became the acceptedreligions.

During the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries,therefore, the cultural climate of the east coast of Nicaragua and

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Honduras was strongly differentiated from that of western CentralAmerica. In fact, adopting the attitude of their English associates,the native population of eastern Nicaragua-Honduras developed astrong aversion toward the Spanish-speaking peoples of westernCentral America. Many of them have maintained a strong dislikeand distrust to this day.

ORIGINS OF THE MISKITO

During the latter decades of the seventeenth century the MiskitoCoast was a quiet and secluded backwater region. Consequently, itbecame a zone of refuge for African and mulatto slaves and freedslaves, including survivors of a wrecked slaving vessel and freedslaves from a short-lived English colony on the Caribbean island ofProvidencia. Many of these new arrivals, presumably mainly men,settled in the vicinity of Cape Gracias a Dios, at the mouth of theRío Coco (known also as the Wangks or Segovia River), the currentboundary between Nicaragua and Honduras. There they intermin-gled with local native women and established a small population(perhaps one thousand) of mixed African-Indian descent known inthe colonial literature as the Miskito (Mosquito)-Zambos. This wasthe beginning of the ethnic group now known as the MiskitoIndians, many of whom still consider the Río Coco to be the heart-land of their territory.8

Because of its isolation and proximity to the Caribbean Sea,the Miskito Coast also became a favorite rest and rendezvouslocale for French, English, and Dutch privateers and buccaneers,who could remain safely hidden in its numerous coves and inletsbetween raids on Caribbean shipping and on Hispanic settle-ments of the Caribbean region (the Spanish Main). During the lateseventeenth and early eighteenth centuries the Miskito becamewilling allies of these pirates, who also enjoyed the amenities ofMiskito village life. Miskito men accompanied buccaneers to sea,serving mainly as provisioners because they were excellenthunters and fishermen.9

They also received muskets and ammunition (and other typesof European goods) from the buccaneers. Armed with theseweapons, the Miskito began their own military expansion to thenorth and south of Cape Gracias, along the Caribbean coast ofHonduras and Nicaragua, absorbing some local natives (who had


only traditional weapons for defense) and driving others away,farther into the interior, to seek sanctuary in the wilds of the cen-tral mountains. These interior people, whose numbers have grad-ually declined, are known to us now by the collective term,Sumu.10

The Miskito also found allies in English planters and traderswho settled at river mouths along the coast (including survivingbuccaneers who had opted to settle down to a safer, if duller,lifestyle). These settlers used the Miskito as trading “middle-men” vis-à-vis interior natives who hesitated to come to thecoast themselves now that Europeans and militarily powerfulMiskito were on the scene. In return for forest products acquiredby the Miskito from “upriver” Sumu Indians, the English pro-vided the Miskito with a range of European goods, some ofwhich the Miskito returned to their interior trade partners.These goods further strengthened the identity and dominance ofthe Miskito.11

Their English contacts also enabled the Miskito to range evenfarther afield during the first half of the eighteenth century and toconduct damaging raids against other native populations in themountains of central Honduras and Nicaragua, in the coastalareas of Costa Rica to the south, and, to the north, in easternGuatemala and Yucatan. The goal of these raids was primarily toobtain native people as war-captives. Some of these captives(mainly the women) were kept by the Miskito themselves andadopted into their own families, helping greatly to increase theMiskito population. Other war-captives were sold to British set-tlers for use as laborers on English plantations on the island ofJamaica.12

These raids were greatly feared both by Spanish frontiercolonists and Central American native peoples, and the Miskitoreceived a long-standing reputation as fierce fighters. During thistime the Miskito were frequently referred to, especially byHispanic Central Americans, as Miskito-Zambos. The term“Zambo” emphasized the Indian-Black admixture of the popula-tion. This mixed ancestry was reputed, by Europeans, to explainsome of the ferocity of Miskito raiders. The Miskito continuedtheir depredations until about 1740, by which time labor require-ments on Jamaica were adequately met by African slaves whowere preferred as laborers by plantation owners. As this marketfor native laborers declined, Miskito raids ended, too.13

During the remainder of the eighteenth century and through-

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out the nineteenth century the Miskito population consolidatedtheir hold over the coast. Their settlements extended up the RíoCoco for several hundred miles and along the Caribbean coastlinefrom Río Negro (Honduras) in the north to Pearl Lagoon(Nicaragua) in the south. The Miskito generally lived in proximi-ty to rivers and European trading stations at river mouths andmaintained regular interaction both with English-speakingtraders and settlers and with interior natives.

The Miskito adjustment to coastal life was made possible onlyby continuing to serve, as in prior centuries, as middlemenbetween Europeans and interior tribes. Coastal territory providedexcellent fishing conditions but was poor for agriculture, exceptfor manioc, a tuber that can grow in the sandy coastal soils, and afew varieties of fruit trees. The coast proper also lacked forestresources needed for the local manufacture of numerous house-hold items. In order to acquire the necessary range of foodstuffsand domestic products the Miskito tended agricultural plotslocated along river banks some distance upstream from the coast,periodically traveled south to coastal Costa Rica to harvest quan-tities of sea turtles from nesting sites on the beaches, tradedEuropean goods (axes, adzes, beads, mirrors) and coastal prod-ucts (salt, turtle meat) with interior tribes in exchange for forestproducts (game, rough-hewn dugouts, gourds and calabashes,skins, net hammocks, sarsaparilla) and obtained European goodsfrom coastal trading posts in exchange for local coastal resources(turtle shells, skins).14

By the late nineteenth century and during the twentieth centu-ry Christianization was begun under the guidance of German and,later, American missionaries of the Moravian Church, who operat-ed small trading posts and eventually introduced small clinicswhere Western medical care could be obtained. The missionariesdeveloped a written form of Miskito, translated hymns and theBible, and introduced literacy and Western modes of schooling totrain native lay pastors.15

During these years the Miskito Coast also attracted variousWestern business enterprises interested in the natural resourcesof the region. Commercial rubber tapping was profitable duringthe last half of the nineteenth century. Then lumber companiescut valuable mahogany and pine. Mining entrepreneurs soughtprecious metals in the interior mountains (as colonial Spaniardshad done before them), and banana companies established com-mercial plantations on the lowlands. Banana companies also


introduced, as laborers, a population of English-speaking “creole”persons from Jamaica and the Grand Cayman Islands, whosedescendants still form an important component of the few porttowns that were established on the Coast.16

These businesses, which replaced the small colonial tradingenterprises of earlier centuries, now provided the Miskito withopportunities for wage labor. Miskito men worked as cutters forlumber companies, provided river transport for India rubbertraders, worked at the mines, and grew cash crops—rice andbeans and bananas—for sale to Europeans. However, theseoperations were highly speculative, meaning that the businessesremained viable only so long as an immediate profit could bemade and were readily abandoned when the resources becamedepleted or when better investment opportunities beckonedelsewhere for Western owners and investors. Consequently,wage labor opportunities (and the coastal money economy)were of the “enclave” or “boom-and-bust” variety common tofrontiers like the Miskito Coast. When a foreign company wasoperating, jobs and money would be available for native labor-ers; but when a company stopped operation and left the region,jobs and money would suddenly be gone. Because foreign com-panies came and went rather regularly, periods when jobs wereavailable alternated frequently with periods when jobs werescarce or nonexistent.

The Miskito handled this situation well, however, by continu-ing to maintain their own traditional subsistence economy basedon horticulture, hunting, and fishing. It was possible to do sobecause, in spite of centuries of involvement with foreigners, theMiskito had never lost access to the basic land and waterresources that provisioned them. Foreign settlements were smalland the number of resident Europeans and other non-Miskitolimited. Foreign businesses did not obtain permanent land rightsbut were interested only in movable forms of natural resourcessuch as wood products and metals. Consequently, traditionalsubsistence continued year in and year out regardless of thevagaries of Western enterprises. Women tended to most of theagricultural work. Men alternated between wage jobs, when theywere available, and traditional hunting, fishing, and farmingwhen wage labor was gone. Lack of money meant store-boughtitems would be in short supply at times, but basic survival wasnever threatened because the traditional economy continued toflourish.17

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Flexibility under boom-and-bust economic conditions wasalso facilitated by matrilocal marital residence, meaning thatmarried couples lived either under the same roof as the wife’sparents or in a separate dwelling located in the same village asthe wife’s parents. This arrangement may have developed inearlier centuries as a response to contact situations in which for-mer slaves and freedmen, settled buccaneers, and other foreignplanters and traders took native women as wives. It may alsohave developed when Miskito men were frequently away fromhome as buccaneer assistants or as raiders themselves, activitiesthat caused men to be absent for many months or even years ata time.18

When men were away matrilocal residence allowed domesticand village life to continue without disruption as related groups ofkinswomen—mothers, daughters, sisters—remained together inresidence in their home villages, maintaining traditional languageand customs, socializing their children in Miskito ways, and main-taining agricultural production. As a result, no matter what thenature of their later wanderings (particularly with reference toboys), there was always a solid base of Miskitoness firmly estab-lished in a child’s formative years of village life. The core of familywomen remaining at home also meant that there were functioninghouseholds for husband-fathers to return to when adventures far-ther afield were unavailable and that these same men could easilyleave at a later time if new work opportunities became available onthe coast.

A VILLAGE ON THE RIO COCO

When I lived in Asang in the mid-1960s the Miskito Coast wasin an economic depression. Pine lumbering, the latest economic“boom,” had declined and wage labor was hard to find.19 One ofthe consequences of that decline was seen in the increasing iso-lation of communities as logging roads fell into disrepair andsmall-plane service ended. Travel was mainly by water, as ithad been for prior centuries. Although I was able, on a few occa-sions, to fly by small plane in about thirty minutes from PuertoCabezas on the coast to a landing strip a few miles short ofAsang, about 200 miles upriver on the Río Coco, the more usual


mode of travel took several days at best; a few hours by landtransport over a lumber road from Puerto Cabezas to the RíoCoco followed by river travel to Asang—a trip of several daysby poled dugout canoe.20 (Canoes were powered upstream notby paddling but by pushing against the river bottom with a longpole; the work is easier and faster if several men pole at once.Travelers, enduring sun or rain, sit cross-legged on a narrowplank or, more likely, on several sections of bamboo wedgedbetween the narrow sides of the craft.) The canoe trip took amere eight hours if the dugout were equipped with a smallmotor. Alternately a seat might be found on one of the commer-cial barges that traveled from village to village serving as float-ing commissaries.

The Río Coco is one of the longest rivers in Central America,flowing approximately 760 kilometers (470 miles) from interiorsources near the Pacific coast to the Caribbean shore (CapeGracias a Dios). Like many tropical rivers, its length is a functionof numerous meanders. Traveling upriver from close to the coast,as I did, the river initially winds through flat, open savannahwhere fertile alluvial banks are lined with mangrove, bush, orbamboo groves. Sometimes a cleared area appeared where man-ioc, maize, rice, and beans were growing, or a small banana orplantain patch came into view. When a curve loomed ahead a vil-lage usually appeared, with houses strung along the edge of ahigh bank overlooking a gravel and sand beach where cattle anda few horses might be standing knee-deep in the water to escapeswarms of mosquitos.

It was a peaceful scene, enlivened perhaps by a kingfisherflashing by with rasping calls of annoyance or a chain of brightlycolored butterflies suddenly erupting from the bush along theriver bank or by a glimpse of a woman fishing as she knelt quietlyin the bottom of her dugout anchored at a sheltered spot. Otherdugouts occasionally might drift past on their way downstream,men relaxed, freed from the chore of poling, but alert for sub-merged debris as the current swept them along. Such a canoe washeld steady by a woman kneeling in the stern and trailing a pad-dle as a rudder. Once I saw a bamboo raft float by carrying a fam-ily of Sumu Indians who were traveling down river from the iso-lated interior. They had built a fire on their raft for cooking andquickly hid their faces behind hands or hats or sleeves when theysaw my camera.

As the river winds inland the land gradually rises and lowmountains form a constant backdrop for the riverine panorama.

MISKITO 11

Eventually, not too far beyond Asang, the character of the riverabruptly changes. Instead of mud banks draped with greenery,stretches of bush and gardens, beaches and a quiet river, thelandscape alters to show huge black rocks jutting from the mid-dle of the river, which now roars and churns and foams. Morerocks line the banks, the river follows a torturous, twisting path,and swift boiling rapids take control of the dugout, leavingbowmen and motorman little to do except to try to protect themotor from the stones and prevent a broadside crash against therocks.

Very little traffic is found in these stretches of the river. Thosewho attempt it generally do so during the dry season, Januarythrough April, when there is virtually no rain, the river leveldrops, and the rapids are more subdued. On the lower river,though, dry season travel can be difficult if the shallower riveruncovers extensive sections of gravel beach and loaded dugoutsrun a greater risk of running aground. This situation alters inMay, when rains begin and the heavy downpours turn the riverinto a ranging torrent carrying huge trees and mobile dams ofdebris in its swirling path. One blow from a hurtling log can easi-ly capsize a dugout or raft. But a flooding river has its advan-tages, for as it overflows its banks low-lying gardens and smallfields are covered with a muddy liquid carpet that fertilizes andrejuvenates the soil with silt.

Like most Miskito river villages, Asang was situated highabove the flood line on top of a small (fifteen- to twenty-foot)bluff with a mud and grass embankment which was climbed by aseries of twisting, slippery, narrow paths. It was one of aboutforty Miskito settlements extending from Cape Gracias to Bocay,above the rapids. The name Asang is a Sumu word meaning“hilly land covered with forest.” When I lived there it was a largecommunity with a population of 665. Some ninety inhabiteddwelling units had been built, standing in several parallel rowsall facing the river, in addition to a school, a small commissary,and two churches (the larger and dominant one Moravian, theother, Church of God).

It was a picturesque community. Tangled growths of forestand uncleared bush surrounded the village on three sides butgrazing animals and periodic work parties kept grass low in thevillage. Numerous citrus trees provided shade and fruit. A fewcoconut palms added character along with a considerable variety


of other trees: cashew, rose-apple, papaya, mango, pejivallepalm, zapote, soursap, calabash. Small herb gardens, fenced withrough wood or bamboo against cows and pigs, were cultivatedclose to homes. Garden flowers and flowering bushes, includinggardenias and a wonderfully scented night-blooming lily, werevalued for ornament. Slab benches were built along the edge ofthe bluff, affording a magnificent view of the country across theriver. This was a popular spot where young people could “hangout” in the evening. Asang residents also had access to a dozenor more natural springs that flowed from the river bank andafforded clean fresh water, greatly preferable to using impureriver or creek water (and one of the reasons Asang was a goodchoice for me).

A typical dwelling unit was composed of two buildings. One,the larger, approximately 18–19’ by 22–24’, was divided intosleeping compartments for the household, typically a couple withgrowing children and sometimes the husband’s or wife’s parents.Most of the time people sat or worked on a porch stretching thewidth of the house or in the cleaned yard in front. A smallerbuilding (about 14 by 19’) served as kitchen and produce centerand contained a clay cooking platform—a table-like structurestanding on legs with raised sides and filled with white clay onwhich a fire could be built. Cooking refuse could be tossed out anearby window where the family’s pigs hurried to eat foodscraps. (It was thanks to the pigs as well as to people’s efforts thatAsang was a very clean and pleasant village.) The kitchen wasjoined to the sleeping quarters by a plank and both structuresstood about four feet above the ground on wooden pilings.Access to the house was by steps or a notched log. Dwelling unitswere constructed either of wood planks or of flattened bamboo,and most had thatched roofs, though a few well-to-do familieshad roofs of corrugated metal, which was prestigious but very hoton sunny days.

The wooden, red-roofed Moravian Church dominated all, andcould be seen from several miles downriver. The mission alsoincluded a wooden house and kitchen unit built for the use of thelay pastor and his family. The interior of this structure was builtalong European lines with several separate bedrooms surroundinga large central hall. The lay pastor and his wife and family ofyoung children preferred to sleep together in the largest of the bed-rooms, leaving three smaller ones unoccupied. One of these was

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used for storage, another as the lay pastor’s office. The thirdbecame my home.

FAMILY AND KINSHIP

IN A MISKITO COMMUNITY

Asang was founded about 1910 by a family whose original homehad been destroyed in a flood. The move was not without somedanger, for the river below the high bank where Asang was to bebuilt was believed to be the home of an evil spirit (apparently anarea prone to whirlpools then), and it was necessary for a shamanto exorcise the malevolent being before the bush could be clearedand a few houses built.

The nucleus of the new village formed around five daughtersand two sons of a prominent man. The families of these siblingsconstituted the major kinship groups of Asang when I lived there.Several of the sisters’ spouses were non-Miskito, and illustratewell the mixing of Miskito women and non-Miskito men that hasbeen a characteristic of the Miskito in general since their origins.One sister was married to an Englishman who originally camefrom Cornwall, England, and had operated a general store andowned some cattle before settling in Asang. After his death hiswidow married a Nicaraguan reportedly from Managua. Anothersister married a Spanish-speaking Honduranean man, while theonly child of a fourth sister married a merchant of Jewish back-ground. Another foreigner who settled in Asang soon after itsfounding was an American (United States) Black originally fromOhio who was involved in mahogany lumbering and owned achain of three commissaries along the river (one in Asang). Thisman had two Miskito wives, one of whom had several sisterswho, along with their spouses (at least one of whom was a non-Miskito Honduranean), moved to Asang, too. Several Creole meneventually moved from the coast to the growing community, mar-ried Miskito women, and settled down. Most Asang residents wererelated either to the original five siblings or to the family of theAmerican; members of these two family groups have intermarriedover the years.

One of the social practices that most directly expressed theinterrelatedness of individuals and families was the use of


teknonymy, the practice of referring to an adult by the name of hisor her eldest child or sometimes, spouse. Girls and women in par-ticular used this type of reference, referring to another adult ordirectly addressing that person not by personal name but as “so-and-so’s mother” or “so-and-so’s father” or “so-and-so’s spouse.”For example, a woman might call out from her kitchen to her hus-band, “Alonso popika, dinner’s ready”; Alonso being their eldestchild and popika being an anglicized term for father. Men weremore likely to use personal names, especially when dealing withother men, probably due to their experience in wage labor jobswhere personal names were necessary for payroll and other workrelationships.

In the formal kinship system in use in the mid-twentiethcentury, an individual would use the terms for brother and sis-ter not only for all of his or her siblings but also for all firstcousins. Separate terms were used for mother and father, butinstead of lumping mother’s and father’s siblings into two cate-gories (aunt and uncle) as English-speakers do, separate termswere also used for mother’s sister, mother’s brother, father’s sis-ter, and father’s brother. This custom was fairly new. In the latenineteenth century terms for father and father’s brother andfather’s sister had been basically the same (father was called aisaand both father’s brother and father’s sister were called aisadiura, meaning “father’s sibling”). Similarly, terms for motherand mother’s sister had been basically the same (mother wascalled yapti and mother’s sister was called yapti diura, meaning“mother’s sibling”). There was a separate term—tahti—formother’s brother. At that time brother-sister terms were extend-ed only to certain first cousins—the children of father’s brotherand mother’s sister (what anthropologists call “parallelcousins”). Other first cousins, the children of mother’s brotherand possibly father’s sister (what anthropologists call “cross-cousins”), were given different terms and were considered aspossible marriage partners.

In Asang the terms for brother and sister were used in a dif-ferent way than English-speakers do. Although two terms areused, one—moini—means “person of same sex same generationas the speaker” and the other—lakra—means “person of oppositesex same generation as the speaker.” Thus, a boy or man callsanother boy or man moini and a girl or woman calls another girlor woman moini, but boy and girl or man and woman address

MISKITO 15

each other as lakra. These terms were also extended to include thechildren of any persons whom an individual’s parents calledbrother and sister, which included the children of all personswhom their parents had called brother and sister. As a result,brother and sister actually referred to many persons whose spe-cific kin ties to an individual might not be well known, especiallysince kinship reckoning for an individual generally stopped atabout the great-grandparent generation. Stated more accurately,the names of the dead were not mentioned, keeping specific kin-reckonings quite abbreviated.

Use of brother or of sister in effect became a respectful way ofaddressing even strangers, and could be seen to unite all Miskitointo a network of mutual “brotherhood” and “sisterhood.” Thispractice was also compatible with the traditional Moravian prac-tice of addressing other church members as brothers and sisters.For Moravian Miskito, the majority today, use of brother and sis-ter thus connotes a general social and ideological communalitywith all Miskito.

Matrilocal residence, in which an Asang woman married anon-Asang man who came to live in his wife’s community, proba-bly in the same household as her parents, had been followed bymany Asang families, particularly in older generation marriages.But there was a definite trend toward village endogamy amongthe younger generation, who preferred to find a spouse withinAsang. These marriages also showed a distinct preference for vir-ilocal or neolocal residence within the village. Residence for new-lyweds tended to be with the husband’s family with the expecta-tion that they would eventually build homes of their own near thehusband’s parents’ home or at the back of the village where moreland could be cleared. To help co-resident families keep the peace,mother-in-law and son-in-law as well as father-in-law and daugh-ter-in-law avoidance was practiced (meaning that these personsofficially did not speak to each other) after the birth of a child.

People were somewhat defensive about village endogamy,saying that by seeking a mate from within Asang a person at leastknew the type of individual he or she would be marrying and couldexpect a more stable marriage. Asang residents, in fact, were quiteproud of their orderly community. Outsiders as spouses were oftenperceived as potential troublemakers, perhaps prone to drinking orgenerally unfriendly. Some of this attitude reflected the reality thatalcoholism, especially among teenagers, was a major problem inmany Miskito villages but not in Asang, where the strict practices of


Moravianism were stringently enforced by church and villageelders. Adult villagers simply did not tolerate unruly or drunkenbehavior, and I saw virtually none. Asang was renowned along theriver for this sobriety, and other villagers often had mixed feelingsabout Asang’s insistence on strict and righteous behavior.

Until the early twentieth century, marriage between cross-cousins was the rule, meaning an individual married a father’s sis-ter’s child or a mother’s brother’s child. The children of two broth-ers or of two sisters were definitely not to marry, but the childrenof brothers and sisters were encouraged to do so. (These personswould not have been living in the same village if matrilocal resi-dence were followed, as it generally was then). The prohibition ofmarriage between offspring of two brothers or two sisters was stillfollowed in Asang when I lived there. People were also troubled ifthe couple who wished to marry stood as “brother” and “sister” toeach other, as was increasingly the case as village endogamy con-tinued. Preference for the security of a spouse from within Asangthus could clash with ideas about proper social or kinship distancebetween prospective spouses and/or their families.

Wage labor opportunities plus missionary pressures have alsoincreased the age at marriage. Girls used to be betrothed by theirparents while still children, perhaps eight or nine years old, andmarried shortly after reaching puberty. In Asang, however, menmarried at about twenty to twenty-six years of age and women atabout sixteen to twenty-two, when they felt they could adequatelysupport a family. Having children is important to Miskito familiesand a girl was thought to have reached adulthood when she borea child, regardless of marital status. In fact, because divorce wasfrowned upon by the mission churches, couples frequentlydelayed a church wedding until their family was well establishedand the compatability of the parents beyond doubt.

Secular marriages were more common among young peo-ple, however, who could be married by the village headman, theofficial representative of the village to the Nicaraguan govern-ment. (The headman of Asang was empowered both to conductcivil marriages and to record births and deaths.) Prior to mis-sionary influence polygyny was possible, though not so verycommon. Well-to-do and influential men were most likely tohave two or (rarely) more wives. In Asang, although the days ofpolygyny were remembered, all families were monogamous.Families in Asang were large, not only because women boremany children but also because in half the Asang households

MISKITO 17

two or more families lived together. Eighty percent of thewomen of child-bearing age had borne from seven to twelvechildren apiece, with the number of living children averagingabout eight. Sixty percent of these women had lost childrenunder the age of six either from disease or as stillbirths probablycaused by the hard physical labor involved in women’s house-hold and field work.

Respect should be shown between all relatives and wasexpressed through food sharing. Proper Miskito hospitalityrequired that food be offered to anyone, relative or stranger, whowas in the vicinity when food was being prepared or eaten. Foodsharing thus served as an integrating mechanism for village soci-ety. There was a constant exchange of small amounts of foodbetween relatives and neighbors every day. A cup of coffee and anextra flour tortilla or some wabul (a staple beverage made ofmashed boiled bananas or plantains mixed with water) might besent to the house next door anytime. Portions of the catch werealso distributed after a successful hunting or fishing expedition orwhen a cow or pig was slaughtered. The role of women asguardians of the social core was given particular expression andsupport by food sharing. Although it was the man who was theo-retically responsible for providing food for the household, it wasthe woman who was responsible for distributing food among rela-tives. Thus it was usually to other women that food was sent, andwhen food was sent directly to men it was likely that they wouldbe related to the giver on the maternal side.

VILLAGE ECONOMIC LIFE

Within the operation of the household and related activitiesthere was a general division of labor between men and women.Men were expected to chop wood, clear fields, and build housesbut not to carry water, wash clothes, or cook. These werewomen’s duties. Women, however, were fully capable of almostevery type of task either at home or in the field. A husband’speriodic trips to other villages, his absences while workingdownriver, or desertion by her husband forced many women tolearn to take care of themselves and their families almost single-handedly.

Men as a group were casual, laughing, and independent.


They did not complain much about daily matters. They jokedreadily. Women, on the other hand, usually had something tocomplain about—health, overwork, general poverty. Womendidn’t joke as much, were more serious, and gave the impressionof hard and steady work. Men had definite periods of free time,too, after they returned from the day’s work in the fields and theyenjoyed longer respites from their work by occasional visits toother villages. Women’s work, in contrast, seemed endless, andthey rarely had a chance to enjoy a change.

Much of women’s work involved agriculture. Agriculturewas focused on subsistence crops (sweet manioc and other tubers,plantains, and bananas with maize, cacao, pineapple, sugarcane,and tree fruits cultivated on a smaller scale) and on potential cashcrops (rice, beans, and certain varieties of bananas). Bananas hadbeen cultivated widely when the commercial banana businesswas booming, and dry rice and apparently also beans began to begrown to feed foreign lumber workers. By the mid-1960s produc-tion of rice and beans had added a major component to the agri-cultural year and had become food staples for the Miskito, espe-cially because the economic depression had effectively removedthe foreign customers for these cash crops. Women, who workedin the fields eleven months out of twelve, handled most of thedaily agricultural chores, including the tedious job of weedingrice, while men’s agricultural labor centered more on briefer peri-ods of clearing and, together with women, planting and harvest-ing rice and beans.

Agriculture in Asang was conducted by slash-and-burn tech-niques in which fields were cleared by machete, allowed to dry,and sometimes fired. Details of crop rotation and field fallowingwere determined by type of crop and field preparation. Annualcrops of rice, manioc, and maize were planted in fields that hadbeen burned. Perennial crops of bananas and plantains were plant-ed in unburned fields. Beans, a major annual crop, were also plant-ed in unburned fields, sometimes alone or sometimes amongbanana and plantain plants. Rice, bean, and maize fields were gen-erally planted for one year and then allowed to lie fallow for one ortwo years. Manioc fields were used for several years before allow-ing a year’s fallow period.

Land by itself had no monetary value—to buy or sell land wasinconceivable. It was free for the taking. Once cleared, however, aplot of land belonged to the person who had cleared it, who alonedirected its use. Sometimes, however, people tried to “steal” anoth-

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er’s land by planting perennial plants, a procedure which was afrequent cause for quarrels.

All agricultural work was done by hand with only diggingsticks and machetes as tools. Each nuclear family was basicallyresponsible for its own agricultural plots, though there was con-siderable cooperation between households of relatives and neigh-bors during crucial periods of field burning, planting, and har-vesting.

Cultivated foods formed the basis of daily meals. Generallytwo main meals were eaten, one in the early morning shortly afterdawn and the other in the late afternoon. A typical meal includedrice and beans, boiled green bananas or baked plantains, boiledmanioc, perhaps a small fish, and coffee or wabul. Wabul provid-ed a warm and satisfying drink, and no Miskito meal was com-plete without it. Maize, the Mesoamerican staple, was mainlyused in beverages and played only a small, though constant, rolein Miskito diets. A piece of meat or fish or perhaps a flour tortillawas a treat and not available every day.

Domestic animals—horses, cattle, pigs, chickens, turkeys,and an occasional muscovy duck—were raised by the villagers,but with little care and in a rather casual manner. Sale of pork orbeef or of a fowl brought in a bit of cash. Cattle were kept main-ly as an emergency source of money, and because they representwealth, cattle were also prestige items. An average family hadone or two head. Most cattle roamed the bush and often died ofold age. Pigs provided more meat and were slaughtered on spe-cial occasions, especially to reward people who had helped withcooperative agricultural activities or at Christmas and New Yearcelebrations.

Agriculture provided most food, but many men still enjoyedhunting and fishing although game, once abundant, haddecreased as human population grew and hunting and fishinghad become largely recreational activities. Wild game was stillconsidered the best form of meat, however, much superior to thatof domestic animals. A wide range of honeys, fruits, and seedswere gathered casually in the bush as people came and wentabout their tasks, and were eaten as between-meal snacks. Somehouseholds kept hives of stingless bees in large bamboo jointssuspended from the house porch roof, and enjoyed the honey,which they prepared as a beverage.

A number of forest products were also still used around the


house. For example, annatto provided food coloring and wasapplied to the face for protection against the sun. Hair oil wasmade from oil palm seeds. The juice of a variety of sour orangewas used to scrub floors and tables and was applied as a bleachto bark cloth as the bark was beaten over a log bench with agrooved wooden mallet. Bark cloth was made from the innerbark of a tree closely related to the rubber tree. It was used forbedding and, before the turn of the century, as clothing particu-larly for women, who wore a bark cloth wrap from waist toknees. (Under missionary influence cotton dresses replaced thebark cloth wrap.) Gourds and calabashes were used as watercarriers. Thin strips of tree bark fiber were invaluable for carry-ing lines and for tying things together. Large leaves were usedfor wrapping food packages and made impromptu umbrellas ina sudden downpour. Silk-grass fibers could be rolled into anextremely durable thread and a pierced thorn made a service-able needle if such sewing supplies were not available at thecommissary. All manner of household utensils and furniturewere made of wood, and torches of pine provided the only lighton dark nights for most families. (Kerosene lanterns were theother lighting option, but were used mainly for community andchurch events.) Baskets of various sizes were made of vines andtwisted fibers.

Wage labor opportunities were limited when I lived inAsang. Work in gold mines in the interior offered the best possi-bility, but with a surplus of labor available due to the decline ofother wage-paying jobs there were many men who simply stayedin the village and did agricultural work. For the same reasoncash was scarce. (I found it almost impossible to get change forlarge bills.) Store purchases either at the two small shops inAsang or in other villages were sharply curtailed. Many peoplefelt frustrated and personally deprived by the decline in thecash economy. They complained frequently of hard times and ofthe absence of cash and even of food. Although there was plentyto eat, the basis of the diet was the cash crops—rice and beans—which people would much rather have sold in order to be ableto buy salt, sugar, lard, flour, and various manufactured house-hold and personal items (soap, cigarettes, cloth, kerosene, tobac-co). To have to eat the cash crops because there were no foreign-ers to buy them epitomized both the economic depressionaffecting the cash economy and the personal disquietude of thejobless populace.

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POLITICAL INTEGRATION

The people of Asang directed their personal lives and communityaffairs according to traditional Miskito custom, mission churchregulations (primarily Moravian), and statutes of the Republic ofNicaragua. Traditional guidelines for behavior were most impor-tant, and were enforced mainly by gossip—highly effective,though productive of a lot of tension, in a rather small face-to-facecommunity. Most traditional behavior involved appropriate ful-fillment of kinship responsibilities, and most gossip dealt withalleged infringements of these responsibilities. Accusations oftheft of small property were frequent. Snatching chickens at nightas they roosted beneath houses in order to sell them outside thevillage was a frequent charge directed at young men, while chil-dren were said (perhaps with some truth) to be stealing eggs tosell to me for meals. Property inheritance at death was anotherpotentially delicate matter that was of relatively recent signifi-cance because before the introduction of missions all personalproperty, including livestock, fruit trees, plantation crops, andpersonal possessions, was destroyed at the death of the owner orburied with the deceased.

If a problem required additional arbitration, most villagers pre-ferred to consult the Moravian lay pastor (a Miskito man,though not originally from Asang) for advice. The communityinfluence of the lay pastor varied greatly from community tocommunity depending on the strength of individual missionsand the personalities and personal abilities of individual laypastors. In Asang the lay pastor was respected and his adviceboth sought and heeded. The lay pastor frequently utilized thechurch Helpers—a group of respected church members actingas community elders—as a community forum for hearing andsettling disputes, whether they related to secular or church-related matters.

The importance of the role of the Moravian church as focalpoint for community affairs in Miskito communities in generalcan hardly be overstated. Prior to the introduction of the missionsin the late nineteenth century, Miskito settlements were very fluidbut tended to form around foreign trading stations at rivermouths. Missions provided a comparable focal point, especially


when the missionary operated a small commissary, too. In addi-tion, the Moravian missionaries themselves were very communi-ty-oriented by virtue of the history of their church, a self-suffi-cient, separatist, and utopian-oriented communal organizationthat developed in Europe in the eighteenth century with roots inthe fifteenth century Czech Reformation.

On the Miskito Coast, the Moravian congregation, with itsassembly of Helpers, served as the focal point for community sta-bility. The church building itself, both as a material symbol and asa meeting place for community activities, became the social coreof many Miskito villages. Certainly in Asang, which had becomeMoravian shortly after its founding only a few generations earli-er, to be a good Miskito person and to be a good communitymember coincided closely, for most people, with being a goodmember of the Moravian church. The church, in turn, emphasizedtraditional Miskito respect for kinsmen along with communityresponsibility and sober living. (A parallel sense of personalworth combined with community and church membership wasexpressed by the few families forming the small Church of Godcongregation, too).

Historically the influence of the Republic of Nicaragua hadbeen negligible on the Miskito Coast and was still very limited inthe mid-1960s. Most Miskito preferred to avoid representatives ofthe central government, and government officials detested assign-ment to stations on the Miskito Coast. A few police stations werekept along the river and Miskito headmen, answerable to thepolice commandante, kept census records and performed civilmarriages. Public schools, taught in Spanish, were staffed bySpanish-speaking Nicaraguans in most villages, but attendancewas poor and such schooling was rather ineffectual overall duelargely to teachers’ lack of understanding of Miskito culture andto the continued primacy of Miskito as mother tongue. Asang’sschool had classes one through six with attendance falling rapidlyafter grade two. School-learned information seemed very littleutilized outside the classroom.

Yet Miskito parents had a high regard for education andwanted their children to become literate, but in English andMiskito rather than in Spanish. Before government schools hadbeen established (in l952), formal education had been handledby the Moravian church with lay pastors (trained by missionar-ies) as teachers. Reading and writing of Miskito was taught so

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that the Bible and hymns (translated into Miskito) could be read.Villagers greatly preferred this system and wished they couldreturn to it. Generally children and adolescents were the mostliterate members of the village. Most adult women had forgot-ten how to read and write, and men’s knowledge, though better,varied in functionality largely because there was not much callfor literacy skills in general. Most men spoke Spanish as well asMiskito and some also spoke English; women usually spokeMiskito alone.

THE FATE OF ASANG

AND THE FUTURE

On January 15, 1982, in the middle of the night, Asang was burntto the ground. For several weeks previous, people had beenkilled, personal belongings confiscated, food supplies destroyed,livestock slaughtered, and the population generally terrorized byHispanic militia. The Nicaraguan Sandinista Revolution, begun inl979 with the ouster of the last dictator of the ruling Somoza fami-ly, had reached the village. The destruction of Asang, along withthe other Río Coco Miskito villages, by Sandinista soldiers wasintended to create a “sanitized” zone, totally devoid of life andresources, along the river to prevent opposition guerrilla forcesfrom establishing any footholds there. In the confusion of thatdreadful night families were separated and children lost as someof the residents of Asang fled across the river to Honduras, ulti-mately to find safety in refugee communities operated under theaegis of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees,while others were marched across country by Sandinistas torefugee communities in Nicaragua. They joined the tens of thou-sands of Miskito dislocated by the bitter fighting of a revolution-ary war.21

The Sandinista revolution, which opposed the longstandingand repressive national government of the United States-backedSomoza dynasty, embroiled the Miskito Coast in harsh and pre-dominantly military activity for several years (especially1981–1984) as revolutionary leaders sought to strengthen govern-ment influence in the extensive Atlantic Coast hinterland that had


remained outside the national life of Nicaragua for so long. TheMiskito resented this intrusion,22 and became actively involved(with considerable United States funding and logistical support)in opposing the revolutionary forces.23 As the Miskito and othercoastal populations became increasingly politicized and as life onthe Coast became thoroughly disrupted and traumatized by theviolence of war,24 the issues they pursued came to include notonly counterrevolutionary goals per se but also growingdemands for government recognition of their distinctive ethnicidentity and for the right of coastal peoples to administer theirterritory and its resources themselves.

Peace was largely restored by the late 1980s, and the demandsfor regional autonomy and political self-government accorded ahearing by the new Nicaraguan government. A difficult process offorging a political arrangement by which Miskito self-governmentand Nicaraguan sovereignty might be made compatible has nowbegun.25 The villages along the Río Coco are gradually coming backto life, too. The people of Asang have returned to begin the rebuild-ing of their community. Like many other returning refugees, theyhave started the slow and difficult process of shaping their lives foran uncertain future.

NOTES

1. Philippe Bourgois, “The Miskitu of Nicaragua,” AnthropologyToday 2 (1986): 4; Mary W. Helms, “The Society and ItsEnvironment,” in James D. Rudolph, ed., Honduras: A CountryStudy (Washington, D.C.: United States Government, 1984), p. 95.

2. Eduard Conzemius, Ethnographical Survey of the Miskito and SumuIndians of Honduras and Nicaragua, Smithsonian Institution, Bureauof American Ethnology, Bulletin 106 (Washington, D.C.: UnitedStates Government, 1932).

3. Mary W. Helms, “The Cultural Ecology of a Colonial Tribe,”Ethnology 8 (1969): 76.

4. John P. Augelli, “The Rimland-Mainland Concept of CultureAreas in Middle America,” Annals of the Association of AmericanGeographers 52 (1962): 119–129.

5. Murdo J. MacLeod, Spanish Central America: A SocioeconomicHistory, 1520–1720 (Berkeley, CA: University of California, 1973),

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part 1.

6. Robert C. West and John P. Augelli, Middle America, Its Lands andPeoples (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1966), chapters 9, 13,14; Mary W. Helms, Middle America: A Culture History of Heartlandand Frontiers (Washington, D.C.: University Press of America,1982), chapter 9.

7. Helms, Middle America, chapter 13; Troy S. Floyd, The Anglo-Spanish Struggle for Mosquitia (Albuquerque, NM: University ofNew Mexico, 1967).

8. Mary W. Helms, “Coastal Adaptations as Contact Phenomenaamong the Miskito and Cuna Indians of Lower Central America,”in Barbara Stark and Barbara Voorhies, eds., Prehistoric CoastalAdaptations (New York: Academic, l978), pp. 128, 136; Mary W.Helms, Asang: Adaptations to Culture Contact in a MiskitoCommunity (Gainesville, FL: University of Florida, l971), pp. 15–18;Carlos M. Vilas, State, Class, and Ethnicity in Nicaragua (Boulder,CO: Lynne Rienner, l989), p. 17.

9. Helms, “Coastal Adaptations,” p. 131; Floyd, Anglo-SpanishStruggle, chapter 3.

10. Mary W. Helms, “Negro or Indian? The Changing Identity of aFrontier Population,” in Ann M. Pescatello, ed., Old Roots in NewLands: Historical and Anthropological Perspectives on Black Experiencesin the Americas (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1977), pp.159–160; Conzemius, Ethnographical Survey, pp. 14–16.

11. Helms, “Negro or Indian?”

12. Mary W. Helms, “Miskito Slaving and Culture Contact: Ethnicityand Opportunity in an Expanding Population,” Journal ofAnthropological Research 39 (1983).

13. Helms, “Negro or Indian?”

14. Helms, “Coastal Adaptations.”

15. Helms, Asang, pp. 185–186; Helms, “Coastal Adaptations,” pp.134–136; Vilas, State, Class, Ethnicity, pp. 33–36.

16. Helms, Asang, pp. 27–29; Vilas, State, Class, Ethnicity, pp. 44–51.

17. Helms, Asang, pp. 110–115; Helms, “Coastal Adaptations,” pp.142–145.

18. Mary W. Helms, “Matrilocality, Social Solidarity, and CultureContact: Three Case Histories,” Southwestern Journal ofAnthropology 26 (1970).

19. Vilas, State, Class, Ethnicity, chapter 3.


20. All information regarding life in Asang is derived from Helms,Asang, which should be consulted for full particulars.

21. Ibid., p. 5.

22. Philip A. Dennis, “The Costenos and the Revolution inNicaragua,” Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs 23(1981): 288–289; Vilas, State, Class, Ethnicity, chapter 4.

23. Bourgois, “Miskitu”; Vilas, State, Class, Ethnicity, chapter 5.

24. Vilas, State, Class, Ethnicity, pp. 165, 181–182.

25. Ibid., pp. 170–184.

SUGGESTED READINGS

Bell, C. Napier. Tangweera: Life and Adventures among Gentle Savages.Austin, TX: University of Texas, 1989, first published 1899.Remembrances by an Englishman of his boyhood on the MiskitoCoast in the mid-nineteenth century.

Conzemius, Eduard. Ethnographical Survey of the Miskito and SumuIndians of Honduras and Nicaragua. Smithsonian Institution, Bureauof American Ethnology, Bulletin 106. Washington, D.C.: UnitedStates Government, 1932. A compendium of Miskito cultural prac-tices in the early twentieth century.

Helms, Mary W. Asang: Adaptations to Culture Contact in a MiskitoCommunity. Gainesville, FL: University of Florida, 1971). Historyand lifestyle in a riverine Miskito community in the mid-1960s.

Nietschmann, Bernard. Between Land and Water: The Subsistence Ecologyof the Miskito Indians, Eastern Nicargua. New York: Seminar, 1973.Utilization of material resources in a coastal community in the late1960s.

Vilas, Carlos M. State, Class, and Ethnicity in Nicaragua. Boulder, CO:Lynne Rienner, l989. Historical background and the impact of theSandinista Revolution on the east coast of Nicaragua.

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