Miskito Sambu

The Miskitu are an ethnic group of mixed cultural ancestry (African-Indigenous American) occupying a portion of the Caribbean coast of Central America (particularly on the Atlantic coasts of Honduras and Nicaragua) known as the Mosquito Coast region. Modern ethnographic terminology uses the term "Miskito", older documents, beginning with Spanish ones of the early 18th century, refer to the group as "Mosquitos Zambos".

History

Origin

According to early accounts, slaves traveling on a slave ship revolted and took the ship over, but wrecked it near Cape Gracias a Dios, though they disagree on the impact the arrival of these Africans had on the local people, and how they were received. When Alexander Exquemelin, the first and earliest visitor (in c 1671) to the coast to describe the origins of the Miskito Sambu believed that the local people enslaved the Africans anew, while a slightly later account (1688) by the Sieur Raveneau de Lussan, thought that the local people received the Africans hospitably and married with them.