In his 2006 Transatlantic Encounters: American Indians in Britain, 1500–1776, Alden Vaughan devotes a single page to the Miskitu embassy that arrived in London in January of 1775. This is unfortunate. Sent by the Miskitu king to apprise the British Government of usury trade practices by British subjects in the western Caribbean, the embassy included four Miskitu leaders, including Duke Isaac, the author of our letter, two captive Ngäbé Indians from today’s Panama, and other Indigenous peoples. Throughout much of the seventeenth and through the early nineteenth centuries, the Miskitu of eastern Central America, or Mosquitia, traveled widely with northern Europeans, including in the Pacific; several had visited Britain prior to 1775, and many would after this date as well.1Before looking more closely at Isaac’s letter, it is worth knowing more about the Miskitu and why their king, George I, sent his brother, Duke Isaac, his son, George II, and others to London to lodge protests against the trade practices of British subjects with the Earl of Dartmouth, William Legge, Secretary of State for the Colonies (1772–1775). The Miskitu were one of several Indigenous peoples inhabiting the lowland coastal regions of what is today northeastern Honduras and Nicaragua (fig. 1).2 In the early colonial period, the Spaniards called this unexplored region la Provincia de Taguzgalpa, but by the start of the eighteenth century they referred to it as la costa de los Mosquitos. The English referred to the region as the Mosquito Shore, or Mosquitia. This name change reflects the political and military rise of the Miskitu Kingdom, an Afro-Amerindian polity that rejected claims of Spanish dominion over their territory and the lands of other Indigenous peoples “not in the Spanish interest,” as Isaac put it, meaning not under their control.By the middle of the seventeenth century, the Miskitu had absorbed distinct streams of Africans who had escaped bondage, most notably from the wreck of a slave ship around 1641. By the turn of the eighteenth century, two Miskitu groups emerged, one called Sambo Miskitu and the other simply called Miskitu Indians. While scholars have written entire dissertations about the meaning and contextual use of these terms, different Miskitu factions collectively constituted a confederacy that they and contemporaries referred to as the Miskitu Kingdom. This descriptor originated after English settlers on Providence Island sent the son of a Miskitu chief to London in the 1630s. When he returned, his people and others referred to him as the Miskitu king. Eventually, the king and other Miskitu leaders received titles such as governor, general, and admiral from British officials whose authority emanated from Jamaica. By the early eighteenth century, the Miskitu king was always a Sambo Miskitu and the governor, often his political rival and coequal, was a Miskitu Indian. Like other titled men, Duke Isaac received a portion of the annual presents British authorities provided to ensure Miskitu allegiance to their regional interests. These gifts typically included useful items that leaders distributed among their own people, such as cloth, clothing, weapons, tools, and liquor, as well as domestic bric-a-brac, such as needles, fishhooks, and pots.The Miskitu established the geographic extent of their authority through distinct actions on the ground, often with violence or a show of force, by issuing land grants, taxing trade, and establishing tributary relations with surrounding Indigenous peoples and even Spaniards, in some cases. Indeed, the Miskitu considered the annual British presents described by Duke Isaac to be a form of tribute that the British owed them. Following the Aix-la-Chapelle Treaty of 1748, the British government named a Superintendent for the Mosquito Shore to adjudicate Miskitu concerns with the approximately three hundred resident traders, their approximately five hundred African and Indigenous slaves, and the many free and enslaved offspring that arose.3 By the time Isaac and the Miskitu embassy arrived in London on 16 January 1775, the Miskitu exercised authority over coastal regions east of Trujillo, Honduras, and south to Bocas del Toro, Panama—despite the fact that the Spanish maintained a fort near the mouth of the Matina River in Costa Rica (fig. 1). In a letter carried by the embassy to Dartmouth, Miskitu King George claimed that the Bocas del Toro region was “ours by conquest.” Indeed, George also referred to his brother Isaac as the “Duke of Bocotora.”4 This unusual and singular focus on Bocas del Toro—a large bay with multiple islands in what is today northwestern Panama—provides an important clue as to why the embassy was in London at this moment and who funded its travels.The principal objective of the Duke’s letter was to protest the trading practices of subjects of the British Crown. These traders—“chiefly . . . white men,” suggesting some were not—tempted the Miskitu with goods on credit at such exorbitant prices that the Miskitu could not clear their accounts. Indebtedness, the Duke explains, forced the Miskitu to capture and sell neighboring Indigenous peoples who lived outside Spanish control and who were then trafficked as slaves “for as much as Negroes” in South Carolina, Jamaica, and the French West Indies. The British had outlawed the Indian slave trade in the Caribbean in 1741, and knowledge of this fact allowed the Duke to support his complaint with references to “the Laws and Constitution of Great Britain,” the illegality of the Indian slave trade, a superintendent who condoned such practices, and the vaunted British notion of individual Liberty. The subtle but sophisticated critiques of a racialized hypocrisy, predatory capitalism, and an ineffectual and corrupt colonial government were powerful and not lost on Dartmouth. They also provide a nuanced contextualization of the Indian slave trade in Mosquitia.5 In general, the Duke’s letter flips this narrative of blame from the Miskitu to the traders and, by extension, the Atlantic colonial system that consumed the captives. Among his lesser complaints, the Duke refers to Great Britain’s neglect “of our trade in general.” The inference suggests that greater support for Miskitu trade goods—mostly the shell of the hawksbill turtle, the flesh of the green turtle, the medicinal sarsaparilla, and mahogany—would have allowed the Miskitu to discharge their debts without resorting to the capture of “their fellow Creatures.” Supplying a proper schoolmaster would likewise help address the nefarious bookkeeping practices that sustained trader abuses. This was a message the Miskitu king and Duke Isaac felt was falling on deaf ears in Jamaica and needed to reach the highest authorities of the British government.An added Miskitu critique includes the effectiveness of colonial government in Mosquitia as embodied in the British superintendent—an individual appointed from London but who acted under the authority of the governor of Jamaica. The Duke points out that the superintendent resided at Black River, the main British settler colony in the far northwestern edge of Mosquitia, distant from where most Miskitu reside to the south of Cape Gracias a Dios (fig. 1). Consequently, the superintendent visited but once a year to distribute presents. The current superintendent, Robert Hodgson, comes under specific criticism from Isaac for siphoning off gifts rightfully belonging to the Miskitu. Reading other letters associated with the embassy makes it clear that part of the delegation’s goal was to obtain the recall of Superintendent Hodgson, a request that Dartmouth obliged. Unbeknownst to the casual reader of the Duke’s letter, however, is that Hodgson had once sought to arrest Isaac for murder, considered him the “most wicked . . . of the whole [Miskitu] nation,” and had vigorously sought to prevent his travel to England.6 In turn, according to testimony put before the Lords of Trade, Isaac had “demanded the Superintendent be brought to trial, either before our people [British], or his own [the Miskitu]” (Great Britain 1920–38, 14: 31). To put it mildly, the two men were not on good terms.In his own letter to Dartmouth, Miskitu King George noted that he was sending his brother Isaac, his eighteen-year-old son George II, his nephew Admiral Dick Richards, and Captain John Smee. All but Smee were Sambo Miskitu.7 The man who brought the embassy to London at his own expense was Jeremiah Terry, a Virginia-born adventurer intent on getting a land grant from the Miskitu king in the Bocas del Toro region for an intended colonization and trade scheme. Terry had been on the coast since 1773 and had ingratiated himself with the Sambo Miskitu. Besides seeking approval for a colony in Bocas del Toro, Terry wished to end the Indian slave trade on both practical and moral grounds. In general, it was the Miskitu Indians who took Indigenous captives from the Bocas del Toro region, and Terry felt these practices would hinder his trading ambitions; this explains why he worked almost exclusively with the Sambo Miskitu.With Duke Isaac’s consent, Terry also brought to London two Valiente (Ngäbé) Indian bondsmen from Bocas del Toro to embody the horrors of Indigenous slavery. In one letter, Terry explained that an Indian servant died from smallpox on the voyage, but that other servants remained living, suggesting that Terry set off from Mosquitia with perhaps nine Native Americans, or at least seven Native Americans and two unknown servants, some of whom may have been women.8 It is likely that none of these individuals served as the “interpreter” Isaac mentions in his first sentence. While many Miskitu could communicate well in English, none could write this well at this time, suggesting Isaac spoke to his interpreter in English, or perhaps Miskitu, and that someone put his words to paper. Terry is the likely suspect, but he was not on the Mosquito Shore long enough to learn Miskitu beyond a rudimentary level. What we know is that the grammar and expressions of the Duke’s letter are substantially different than the two dozen extant letters written by Terry, suggesting that if he was the scribe, he was a faithful transcriber of Isaac’s syntax and tone.Before the embassy’s eventual audience with Dartmouth around July of 1775, Terry had the Miskitu vaccinated against smallpox. Following this ordeal and the lengthy quarantine it involved, the Miskitu took in the sights of London, and in November of 1775 the embassy and their servants returned home aboard the Morning Star with Olaudah Equiano (a.k.a. Gustavo Vassa). Dr. Charles Irving—famous for receiving a British patent for converting salt to potable water while at sea—co-owned the Morning Star. Irving had long known Vassa and hired him to manage an estate and colonization scheme he hoped to establish on the Mosquito Shore. Indeed, the Miskitu had stayed at Irving’s home for about one-third of their time in London, and scholars have assumed Irving and his Scottish business partner, Alexander Blair, had sent Terry to Mosquitia in the first place.9 After their arrival, the Spanish captured the Morning Star off Black River, derailing but not ending Irving and Vassa’s plantation scheme.10 The duo ended up settling about twenty miles up the Rio Grande in what is today Nicaragua, but Vassa left after only four months and Irving moved to Jamaica shortly thereafter.As Terry became more and more frustrated with the lack of urgency in his lengthy and tedious reimbursement requests, he turned to the Spanish ambassador in London and offered his services as a rebellious American. Spain and France were already contemplating supporting rebels in the North American colonies, and Terry laid out a scheme in which he would convince the Miskitu to make peace with the Spanish and help remove the British from Central America. The ambassador was intrigued and sent Terry to Madrid with introductions (Holmes 1938; Sorsby 1969: 231–50).11 On his way, Terry also met with Benjamin Franklin in Paris and, although we do not know what they talked about, we know that the new superintendent—who eventually confiscated Terry’s personal letters—stated that the Virginian held a commission from the Continental Congress bestowed by Franklin.12After meeting with officials in Madrid, Terry eventually sailed secretly from Bilbao, Spain, for the Mosquito Shore with a Spanish and American crew carrying a cargo of arms and powder, carpentry tools, and fishing gear. After some drama with Spanish privateers, Terry went ashore at the mouth of the Río San Juan. While attempting to set up some warehouses there, Terry got the Miskitu leaders, including the Miskitu Indian governor, to sign a preliminary peace treaty with Spanish officials at Matina, Costa Rica. Duke Isaac, his nephew (now Miskitu King George II following the death of his father in 1777), and several other Miskitu headmen—including Admiral Dick Richards but not, now, General John Smee—were among the signatories. What happened next is complicated, but the Miskitu Indians likely recognized that Terry’s alliance with the Sambo Miskitu would extend Sambo authority to areas traditionally controlled by the Miskitu Indians. In short order, the Miskitu governor (Colville Briton) and General John Smee renounced the treaty and resolved with the British superintendent, James Lawrie, to send Terry to Jamaica in chains. Briton feared that if released, Terry would regroup and receive support from Cartagena and Panama to attack the coast.13 Despite signed agreements to establish peace with the Spaniards, by 1780 Miskitu Sambo and Indian leaders were supporting the British—including the young captains Horatio Nelson and Edward Despard—in their invasion of Nicaragua to open a path between the seas along the Río San Juan (Dziennik 2018).We will never know all the factors that inspired the Duke and his embassy to travel to London at the end of 1774. Still, we should take seriously Isaac’s protest against British trade practices, especially the details of how traders encouraged the Miskitu to capture and sell Indigenous peoples living outside Spanish control. Even though the Miskitu were by far the region’s most important providers of captive Indians to the Atlantic markets, they likely had long questioned the efficacy of this trade and debated whether tributary relations might be more productive, as had proved the case with the neighboring Mayangna, Rama, and Pech (Paya) Indians. Still, a host of evidence confirms that the Miskitu Indians wished to uphold the Indian slave trade longer than the Sambo Miskitu, despite the fact that the Sambo Miskitu were more closely aligned with the British. It is also certain that ending British trader abuses and effectively ending their trade monopoly with the Miskitu was a motivation in establishing peace with the Spaniards, the very position that Terry advocated for and that some Miskitu would take up again over what remained of the colonial period (Williams 2013). In any case, Duke Isaac’s voice provides a powerful critique of British colonial practices on the margins of empire—especially in a period when traders were more arrogant and less respectful of the Miskitu than those of previous generations—and obliges historians to reconsider the driving forces underlying the Indian slave trade from Central America, especially in the second half of the eighteenth century. By understanding the broader context of the embassy and its aftermath, we can locate the Miskitu within a host of transnational and Atlantic political processes that have often neglected them.