Mosquito Coast, Moravian Missionaries
Although the roots of the Protestant Unitas Fratrum (Brudergemeine) can be traced to fifteenth-century Moravia, their constitution as a missionary church dates from 1722, when they were refounded in the Saxon, later Prussian, town of Herrnhut, by some exiled Moravians.
This led to the name “Moravians” in English and Spanish, whereas in Germany they are known as “Herrnhuter Brudergemeine.” Herrnhut was the possession of Count Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf, who established the policy of spreading the Gospel not only through the word, but also through social, educational, and medical work. In cooperation with the British Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, the Moravians soon started to work in the Caribbean, Surinam, and North America, where they worked mostly with plantation slaves.In the middle of the eighteenth century, the first Moravian missionary reached the Mosquito Coast via Jamaica; the real Christianizing work started, however, only a century later. One of the initiators and supporters of an ill-fated Prussian colonization scheme on the coast in the 1840s who was also a patron of the Moravian church, the Prussian Prinz zu Schonburg-Waldenburg, asked the union to consider establishing a missionary post among the Miskitu. With the consent of the British, who had made the Mosquito Coast, officially ruled
by an indigenous king, their protectorate, the Moravians sent two of their brethren from Jamaica, Pastor Gottlob Pfeiffer and Abraham Amadeus Reincke, to explore the possibilities; and the first post was founded in 1849 in Bluefields. The large Englishspeaking black Creole population, who were formally baptized but hardly instructed in the Christian religion, entered the church as a symbol of their high social standing but were treated with suspicion by the missionaries, while the indigenous population was reluctant at first.
After an inspection by the former director of the Moravian missions in Surinam and some following adjustments, the number of converted Miskito and Rama Indians grew from the middle of the 1850s onward. Contrary to the Catholic missionaries, the Moravians were more respectful, or at least careful, in handling indigenous cultural traditions that were incompatible with Christianity, especially the problem of polygamy. Due to the combination of catechization and instruction, as well as artisan work and healing, the Moravian missionaries soon became an important factor not only in the religious but also in the political and social life of the Mosquito Coast. In artisan workshops and the mission shops, where they traded imported goods, the Moravians practiced a form of Christianization that was integrated into daily life and proved of great success. Their medical knowledge often proved to be superior to that of the indigenous shamans, which, in addition to the establishment of schools, converted the missionaries into highly respected experts in worldly as well as religious matters. An En- glish-Miskito dictionary, written by the first black Moravian brother on the coast, Peter Blair from Jamaica, added to this success.At the same time, the gradual retreat of the British from Central America after the 1850 Clayton-Bulwer Treaty seemed to threaten the existence of the missions, because they had to fear an invasion by the Catholic Nicaraguans. Nevertheless, this did not happen. Instead, American companies slowly took the place of the British, and in the political vacuum that resulted from this situation, the Protestant missionaries became political advisers and the guarantors of continuity.
In this situation of political and economic uncertainty, worsened by the fall of world rubber prices after 1879, the people on the coast looked for certainties and guidance in religion. Between 1881 and 1883, the most important wave of conversion on the coast, called the Great Awakening, took place, however, without direct intervention of the missionaries.
It drove thousands of Creoles and Miskito Indians into the Moravian churches. The Great Awakening transformed the religious and social situation on the coast to a point at which missionaries no longer feared Catholic competition. Knowing that incorporation into the Republic of Nicaragua was inevitable, the Moravians slowly began to establish contacts with the Nicaraguans. This proved to be of great importance when the takeover finally occurred in 1894, and the missionaries acted for the years to come as mediators between the Spanish-speaking Nicaraguan and the English- and Miskito-speaking indigenous people and Creoles. At the same time, natives replaced the former mostly German pastors. In this process, Moravian Protestantism came to be the most important symbol of the ethnic identity of the Miskitu and Creoles on the Atlantic Coast of Nicaragua.Barbara Potthast
References and Further Reading
Lioba, Rossbach. “...die armen wilden Indianer mit dem Evangelium bekannt machen. Die Herrnhuter Brudergemeine an der Mosquito-Kuste im 19. Jahrhundert.” In Mosquitia. Die andere Hadfte Nicaragua*. Ed. Klaus Meschkat. Hamburg: Junius, 1987, pp. 65—98.
Potthast-Jutkeit, Barbara. “El impacto de la colonizacion alemana y de las actividades misioneras moravas en la Mosquitia, durante el siglox XIX.” Mesoamerica 28 (1994): 253-288.
Schneider, H. G. Moskito: Zur Erinnerung an die Feier des funfzigjahrigen Bestehens der Mission der Brudergemeine in Mittel- Amerika. Herrnhut: Missionbuchhandlung, 1899.