The subjects of the former are, really, the aborigines of the whole line of coast between Nicaragua and Honduras—there being no Indians remaining in the former republic, and but few in the latter. Of these, too—the Nicaraguans—we have no definite ethnological information. Mr. Squier speaks of them as occupants of the islands of the lakes of the interior. Colonel Galindo also mentions them; but I infer, from his account, that their original language is lost, and that Spanish is their present tongue; just as it is said to be that of the aborigines of St. Salvador and Costa Rica. This makes it difficult to fix them. And the difficulty is increased when we resort to history, tradition, and archæology. History makes them Mexicans—Asteks from the kingdom of Montezuma, and colonists of the Peninsula, just as the Phœnicians were of Carthage. Archæology goes the same way. A detailed description of Mr. Squier's discoveries, is an accession to ethnology which is anxiously expected. At any rate, stone ruins and carved decorations have been[254] found; so that what Mr. Stephenson has written about Yucatan and Guatemala, may be repeated in the case of Nicaragua. Be it so. The difficulty will be but increased; since whatever facts makes Nicaragua Mexican, isolates the Moskitos. They are now in contact with Spaniards and Englishmen—populations whose civilization differs from their own; and populations who are evidently intrusive and of recent origin. Precisely the same would be the case, if the Nicaraguans were made Mexican. The civilization would be of another sort; the population which introduced it would be equally intrusive; and the only difference would be a difference of stage and degree—a little earlier in the way of time, and a little less contrast in the way of skill and industry.
But the evidence in favour of the Mexican origin of the Nicaraguans, is doubtful; and so is the fact of their having wholly lost their native tongue; and until one of these two opinions be proved, it will be well to suspend our judgment as to the isolation of the Moskitos. If, indeed, either of them be true, their ethnological position will be a difficult question. With nothing in Honduras to compare them with—with nothing tangible, or with an apparently incompatible affinity in Nicaragua—with only very general miscellaneous affinities in Guatemala—their ethnological affinities are as peculiar as their political constitution.[255] Nevertheless, isolated as their language is, it has undoubted general affinities with those of America at large; and this is all that it is safe to say at present. But it is safe to say this. We have plenty of data for their tongue, in a grammar of Mr. Henderson's, published at New York, 1846.
The chief fact in the history of the Moskitos, is that they were never subject to the Spaniards. Each continent affords a specimen of this isolated freedom—the independence of some exceptional and impracticable tribes, as compared with the universal empire of some encroaching European power. The Circassians in Caucasus, the Tshuktshi Koriaks in North-eastern Asia, and the Kaffres in Africa, show this. Their relations with the buccaneers were, probably, of an amicable description. So they were with the Negroes—maroon and imported. And this, perhaps, has determined their differentiæ. They are intertropical American aborigines, who have become partially European, without becoming Spanish.
Their physical conformation is that of the South rather than the North American; and, here it must be remembered, that we are passing from one moiety of the new hemisphere to the other. With a skin which is olive-coloured rather than red, they have small limbs and undersized frames; whilst their habits are, mutatis mutandis,[256] those of the intertropical African. This means, that the exuberance of soil, and the heat of the climate, makes them agriculturists rather than shepherds, and idlers rather than agriculturists; since the least possible amount of exertion gives them roots and fruits; whilst it is only those wants which are compatible with indolence that they care to satisfy. They presume rather than improve upon the warmth of their suns, and the fertility of the soil. When they get liquor, they get drunk; when they work hardest, they cut mahogany. Canoes and harpoons represent the native industry. Wulasha is the name of their Evil Spirit, and Liwaia that of a water-god.
I cannot but think that there is much intermixture amongst them. At the same time, the data for ascertaining the amount are wanting. Their greatest intercourse has, probably, been with the Negro; their next greatest with the Englishman. Of the population of the interior, we know next to nothing. Here their neighbours are Spaniards.
They are frontagers to the river San Juan. This gives them their value in politics.
They are the only well-known extant Indians between Guatemala and Veragua. This gives them their value in ethnology.
The populations to which they were most immediately allied, have disappeared from history. This isolates them; so that there is no class to[257] which they can be subordinated. At the same time, they are quite as like the nearest known tribes as the American ethnologist is prepared to expect.
What they were in their truly natural state, when, unmodified by either Englishman or Spaniard, Black or Indian, they represented the indigenous civilization (such as it was) of their coast, is uncertain.