The evidence provided by an analysis of the Misumalpan language family, to which the Mayangna languages belong and which also includes Miskitu and the extinct Matagalpan and Cacaopera tongues once spoken in the Nicaraguan highlands and southern El Salvador, indicates the continuous presence of these groups in the region from around 2000BC.
•
The language spoken around Rosita and Bonanza in the north-eastern part of the RAAN, and today known as 'Mayangna', is in fact two closely related dialects, Twahka and Panamahka, while the people of Karawala in the RAAS, who were also formerly regarded as 'Sumu', speak a closely related sister-language called Ulwa.
•
However, problems with the land continue, and in Wasakin (a Mayangna community near Rosita) a state of violent confrontation between the Mayangna and invading Mestizos has led to the killing of a rancher and the subsequent murder of two young Indians.
•
Augmented by this new influx of women into their communities, as well as by the absorption of escaped or ship-wrecked African slaves, the Miskitu population boomed and this formerly small tribe soon emerged as the politically and demographically dominant local power, a fact already acknowledged by the British in 1660 when they crowned a chieftain called Oldman as the ‘Miskitu King,’ recognising him and his descendents as the legitimate authorities on the coast.
People's Republic of China | English people | French people | Filipino people | British people | Irish people | Scottish people | Romani people | Mexican people | Japanese people | German people | Brazilian people | Italian people | Portuguese people | Dutch people | Turkish people | Welsh people | Pashtun people | Palestinian people | Spanish people | Tamil people | Persian people | Māori people | Chinese people | Bengali people | National Association for the Advancement of Colored People | Igbo people | Yoruba people | People's Liberation Army | Zulu people |