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PRE-COLUMBIAN
HISTORY: Nicaragua has historically been at
the crossroads between northern and southern pre-Spanish civilizations
and cultures and there is evidence of human inhabitancy the
dating back 30,000 years. In Managua near the crater lake of
Acahualinca are some very well preserved human and animal footprints
of what appears to be the remains of a mass fleeing of a volcanic
eruption 6,000 years ago.
The best understood
cultures are the Chorotegas who
came from Mexico around 800 A.D. and the Nicaraos from the same
region who partially displaced the Chorotegas in the Pacific
basin around 1200 A.D. The Nicaraos set up a very successful
agriculture and trade society that did business with tribes
all the way from Mexico to Peru through trading partners.
The more primitive
Chorotegas (Nahua speakers) remained
in the areas not used by the Nicarao (Nahuat speakers) though
some were pushed down into Guanacaste and the relationship between
the two has yet to be well explained. The most interesting pre-Columbian
remains were left by the unnamed and understudied pre-Chorotega
cultures who left many stone petroglyphs and by the Chorotegas
themselves in the form numerous large basalt figures found on
the Lake Nicaragua islands of Zapatera and Ometepe. Nicaragua
is particularly rich in ceramic history with 2,000 years of
constant inhabitation being exhibited in some areas.
The Ramas and
Sumos populated the eastern sea
board regions and are of South American lowland origin and though
almost extinct today, they are still present in small numbers.
Other pre-Columbian cultures of note where the mountain Matagalpa
people thought to be related to the Lenca, and the strangely
primitive and yet to be understood Chontales who inhabited the
eastern side of the lakes and in what is now the city of León
the Subtiava from Baja California in Mexico.
Christopher
Columbus arrived on the Caribbean shores of Nicaragua
in 1502 on his fourth and final voyage. The Spanish explorer
Gil Gonzalez Davila arrived in 1522 overland from Panama to
the shores of Lake Nicaragua to meet with the famous Nicarao
chief Nicaragua. The Nicarao were a peaceful culture and 16th
century Spanish chroniclers described their land as the most
fertile and productive they had ever seen in the Americas.
The chief
Nicaragua and Davila sat for several days engaged
in long philosophical conversations conducted through a translator
and eventually the great chief agreed to accept Christianity.
Later after the conversion to Christianity of more than 19,000
natives, Davila was chased out of the area buy the fierce Chorotega
chieftain Diriangen, who’s troops decimated Davila’s
small force as he made a hasty retreat to Panama. One year later
a stronger force was sent and the populous was subjected in
a campaign by Francisco Hernandez de Cordoba, Granada and Leon
were founded on the shores of Lake Nicaragua and Lake Managua
respectively.
One of the
early Spanish Nicaraguans was instrumental in Pizarro's
conquest of the Incas in Peru and much of the indigenous Nicaraguan
population that was not ravaged by imported diseases was exported
to work as slaves in the mines of Peru.
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