Were the Miskito indians black? Ethnicity, politics and plagiarism in the mid-nineteenth century

Abstract

The anthropological research of Ephraim George Squier, a nineteenth century scholar, diplomat, journalist, and entrepreneur, has come under scrutiny in several articles in recent years (Barnhart 1983, Mould de Pease 1986, Olien 1985). Squier became famous, in the 1840s, for his publications on North American archaeology. During the 1850s, he published extensively on Central America, as a result of having been appointed U.S. charge d'affaires to Central America from 1849 to 1850. Later he published a book and a number of articles on Peru, based on his experiences while serving as U.S. Commissioner to Peru in 1863-4. This article will focus on Squier's work in the 1850s, when his publications were concerned with Central America. In Squier's writings on Central America, political motives often dominated over scholarly research and virtually all of his publications include political propaganda. In particular, data that applied to the Miskito Indians of Nicaragua and Honduras, and their kings, were distorted (Olien 1985: 117125). One type of distortion, or misrepresentation, involved his consistent portrayal of the Miskito Indians as blacks. One of the Squier's Central American writings was the novel Waikna; or, adventures on the Mosquito Shore , that he published in 1855 under the pseudonym Samuel A. Bard. Although Waikna was published under a fictitious name, it was known at least as early as 1856 that Squier was the author (Olien 1985: 117). After 130 years, this novel remains an enigmatic work for Central American scholars. On the one hand, it is obvious that parts of it were written to discredit the Miskito Indians (Stansifer 1959: 149); on the other hand, sections of the novel appear to be legitimate and valuable descriptions of the Mosquito coast and its peoples.1 This article will attempt to identify the ethnographic sources that Squier