Their territory extends from Cape Camarón, Honduras, to Río Grande de Matagalpa, Nicaragua, along the Mosquito Coast, in the Western Caribbean zone.

[citation needed] No Before the arrival of Europeans in the region in the early 16th century, the area was divided into numerous small egalitarian native American groups speaking old Miskito language.

Karl Offen's analysis of this historic data suggests there were about a half dozen entities, groups who were distinct by their language dialects, who were situated in the river basins.

In the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, Miskitos began a series of raids attacking Spanish-held territories and the still independent indigenous groups in the area.

[16] In addition to the area's geographic isolation, the Miskito military capacity and British support allowed the people to retain their independence when Spain controlled the Pacific side of Central America.

The Miskito of Jinotega had closer ties with Sandino and the Sandinista National Liberation Front, which organized agricultural cooperatives and built schools and health centers in the area.

Brooklyn Rivera, one of the Miskito guerrilla leaders, became the director of the INDERA (Nicaraguan Institute of Development of Autonomous Regions), an illegal structure under the 1987 law on autonomy.

They cited as reasons for their renewed desire for independence the serious economic problems damaging their traditional fishing industry and the recent election of Daniel Ortega as president of Nicaragua.

Slow-moving Hurricane Eta landed on November 3 just south of the region's major city Bilwi, and after one day turned west-northwest towards Honduras and then north back into the Caribbean.

[33] Prior to European contact, Miskitos were scattered along the Atlantic Coast of Nicaragua, inhabiting interior mountainous areas with numerous rivers and forests.

[35] Prior to the 1859 Wyke-Cruz treaty with Britain, Miskito people inhabited the Cape of Gracias a Dios on the Caribbean coast and Honduran side of the Nicaragua-Honduras border.

[45] The Miskito political structure has been profoundly shaped via its interactions with other cultures including Hispanicized Nicaragua as well as the British, acting on their perception of colonial power dynamics at any given time.

As the Miskito population grew over time, the political structure effectively transformed into autonomous regional chiefdoms with vaguely defined social classes.

However, as the Honduran government began to become increasingly assertive in the region, the Miskito lost much of their officially recognized political power to African Creoles on representative governmental bodies.

Prior to the notable activist movements of the 1980s, the Miskito prioritized integration into state political structures and civil rights under the liberal Nicaraguan constitution.

Miskito people were able to claim benefits at a larger governmental level that previously did not exist including technical training in medicine and agriculture, as well as increased access to education and more schoolhouses.

For the Miskito in Nicaragua, indigenismo represented an opportunity to increase rapport with the government and greater access to previously inaccessible state resources rather than an affront to ethnic identity.

[57] Miskito oral tradition states that many centuries ago a tribe emigrated from northern South America and settled on the coast at a site called Sitawala – possibly near present-day Cabo Gracias a Dios.

These early accounts claim that Miskito tribes ranged along the Caribbean coast from the Wawa River, south of present-day Bilwi, Nicaragua, to Cabo Camarón, Honduras.

[59] These early colonists, explorers and buccaneers described the Miskito as skilled maritime people adept a seafaring, fishing, and the hunting of turtle, manatee, as well as land animals such as deer.

[59] Work conducted around Pearl Lagoon in Nicaragua by archaeologist Richard W. Magnus suggests that pre-contact coastal settlements were most likely temporary shellfish collection and salt manufacturing stations.

It is suggested that these riverine people traveled temporarily to the coast to make salt and subsidize their agricultural diet with shellfish, but that their overall orientation was inland and not coastal .

[62] Anthropologist Mary W. Helms and Geographer Bernard Nietschmann argue that the coastal orientation of the modern Miskito was precipitated by contact and subsequent social, economic and political involvement with Great Britain.

[14][64] The English regularly traded with the proto-Miskito for turtle shells, meat, lumber, hides, and other items in return, for beads, rum, clothing, food, livestock, and firearms.

A purchase society is a power dynamic in which the indigenous are not subjugated as peasants, but still interact with a merchant or elite class via trade – retaining their autonomy and identity.

[59] In the 17th century, the buccaneer William Dampier wrote that the Moskito Indians were "esteemed and coveted by all privateers" because of their skill at hunting turtle and manatee, "for one or two of them [the animals] in a ship will maintain 100 men".

Foreign companies established commercial enterprises and hired Miskito turtlemen to facilitate intensive harvesting of green turtles to support sugar plantation labor, but also European palates.

[65] Exploitation was so intense that sea turtle populations in the greater Caribbean basin had been decimated by the mid-1800s, and villagers were confronted with rising social tensions due to increased dependence on a scarce resource.

[70] During this time, lumbering of mahogany and other valuable trees, cash cropping of sugar and other products, which had existed in reduced form since the 17th century, expanded into large commercial enterprises.

Without their husbands and male family members, the women were increasingly forced to purchase food (especially meat) on the cash market and hire farm hands to clear and tend agricultural plots.