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San Juan Del Sur, Nicaragua - Background
Archaeologists have unearthed human remains as old as 30,000 years. Since glaciers blocked land-based migration routes from the Bering Strait bridge until 20,000 years later, it has been proposed that the first immigrants may have arrived by sea after their ancestors made their way down the Pacific coast. Others speculate that a group of Polynesian seafarers may have been swept off course to Central America. The true story will never be known, and no one is sure the original tribes stayed, but it is certain that people have inhabited the volcanic region ever since, with only brief lapses.
By 8000 BC, First Nation communities were well established throughout the Americas. The Niquirano people, who occupied the region between Lake Managua (aka Lake Xolotlan) and what is now the Costa Rican border, represented the largest group, by a long shot, in the immediate vicinity. Their society was evidently influenced by the Aztec civilization, and they had the advantage of being a unified nation in a land of small clan based groups. They spoke a dialect of Nahuatl, the pre-Columbian language of central Mexico, and used cacao as currency like the Aztec nation did. Their bucolic world-view is reflected in their intricately decorated pottery and detailed carving styles.
Columbus made a brief visit to the Moskito Coast in 1502 (4th voyage) after his ship was almost wrecked in a storm. The conquest of Central America, however, did not begin until a few decades later when Gil Gonzalez Davila explored the Pacific Coast from his base in Panama. A few years later, Francisco Hernandez de Cordoba followed with an armed contingent. The conquistadors subjugated the Nicaro and then turned against the smaller tribes. It didn’t take long for the land to become a Spanish colony. Native people were enslaved and Spaniards built a grand colonial capital at Leon. Ironically, internal fighting and greed led to the murder of Hernandez de Cordoba himself, and later, as if under divine judgment, Leon was all but leveled in a powerful 1610 earthquake and then it was rebuilt. No one knows the magnitude, but it may have been a big one.
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