Although older records, beginning with Spanish documents of the early 18th century, refer to the group as "Mosquitos Zambos", modern ethnographic terminology uses the term Miskito.
When Alexander Exquemelin, the first and earliest visitor (in c 1671) to the coast to describe the origins of the Miskito Sambu believed that the local people enslaved the Africans anew,[1] while a slightly later account (1688) by the Sieur Raveneau de Lussan, thought that the local people received the Africans hospitably and married with them.
The bishop of Nicaragua, Benito Garret y Arlovi writing in 1711, but basing himself on reports by missionaries who worked in Nueva Segovia and Chontales as well as the testimony of an "ancient" former slave named Juan Ramón, said that the Africans violently overthrew their hosts, and intermarried with their women.
[6] The French translation adds that the ship was Portuguese and had the intention of carrying the slaves to Brazil, and this section may also have been influenced by other unnamed sources.
By the early eighteenth century, the leader of the Sambu group had the Miskito title General in the chieftaincy system of the Mosquito Coast.