Central And South America Volume 2

Synopsis

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1911 Excerpt: ...known as Sambos, possibly because they were shipped at the island of Samba on the coast of Senegambia. From Costa Rica they made their way north to Cape Gracias a Dios, and soon merged with the Caribs in a mixed seafaring population later known as Mosquito Indians. After the dissolution of the buccaneer republic in 1688, they were joined by several of the European freebooters, and the ethnical confusion was increased by the constant accessions of other whites and Negroes from Jamaica, and again by the Negroid Caribs of St. Vincent removed to the Bay Islands by the English in 1796. Such are the components of the extremely mixed SamboCarib. section of the Mosquito Indians, nearly all of whom are familiar both with the original Carib tongue and with English, which is everywhere current along this coast. But many show little or no trace of a Negro strain, and these full-blood Indians now call themselves Tawjwecra that is, straight-haired, in contradistinction to the curly-haired half-breeds. All are described by Mr. C. Napier Bell as a bold seafaring people, frank, friendly quarrelsome, and although nominal Christians (converted by the Moravian missionaries), of extremely lax morals.1 The Mosquito Indians--History of Mosquitia The prevalence of the English language on this seaboard is due to political associations, which go back to early colonial times, and present some features of more than local interest. Discovered by Columbus in 1502, the Mosquito Coast attracted no particular attention till 1 Tangwcera, Life and Adventure among Gentle Savages, 1899. the rise of the buccaneers in the seventeenth century, when its spacious lagoons, approached by intricate channels through the fringing coral reefs, afforded safe...