The Awakening Coast: An Anthology of Moravian Writings from Mosquitia and Eastern Nicaragua, 1849-1899

4. Report on a Journey North in 1859

4 Report on a Journey North in 1859 E. G. Kandler and Peter Blair, “Mosquito-Küste,” Missions-Blatt aus der Brüdergemeine (1859): 249–61. This report combines the narratives of Moravian carpenter Ernst Kandler and the black lay minister and schoolteacher Peter Blair, detailing their trip to the northern portion of Mosquitia and along the lower Wangki River. This was the second exploratory trip that laid the foundation for a new, if short-lived, mission station at Cape Gracias a Dios. The first trip was taken a year earlier, in May 1858, by missionaries Grunewald and Freurig.1 On the third trip, also in 1859, Kandler and his Creole wife established a new mission at Cape Gracias among the predominantly Sambo Miskito and Creole population. The station was closed following the Treaty of Managua in 1860, and it would not be reopened until 1900 when the missionaries returned permanently. Ernst G. G. Kandler, born in Germany in 1818, was one of the first three missionaries to arrive at Bluefields, in 1849. He was never ordained and was “disciplined” for marrying a Creole woman of whom his fellow missionaries did not approve. That said, since she spoke Miskito, she was indispensable in establishing the Cape Gracias station, even though only two converts were baptized before the Kandlers returned to Bluefields in 1861. Kandler spent his remaining years on the coast at Wounta Haulover and died there in 1890. Peter Denton Blair was born in Bethany, Jamaica, in 1835 and studied at the Moravian Training School at Fairfield, Jamaica. He came to Bluefields as a teacher in 1856 and in 1861 began working as a missionary proper. He was ordained in 1867, the first black man to be ordained in Mosquitia. In 1860 he married a “half Indian” named Sally Peachy, described as a “very religious 86 | Report on a Journey North in 1859 and brave woman.” He died in 1897, leaving Sally and his son, the missionary and medical doctor J. Blair.2 Peter Blair’s Miskito language skills were deemed extraordinary by his colleagues. Blair had a leading hand in all the major Moravian translations in the nineteenth century. He was the first to create a word list (dictionary) and a school primer, and he also translated some scripture in collaboration with Br. Friedrich Grunewald by 1860. During the 1860s the two also drafted an unpublished translation of the Gospels. Blair later worked with Br. Wilhelm Siebörger to publish a translation of the Gospels and Acts, known in Miskito as Dawan Bila (Word of God), in 1888. Upon reporting his death, Superintendent Siebörger wrote: “Thus passed away from the battlefield a warrior who . . . has left his mark. Truly of him it can be said, that his works do follow him, and that, though he be dead, he yet speaketh; for his marvelous translations into the native tongue will be used, and will, doubtless, prove a blessing as long as this language is spoken.”3 The report presented here is valuable for two reasons. First, being only a decade in Mosquitia but having traveled little in the north, the Moravian views are more diverse than they appear in later material. For example, the writers refer to the sukia, or shaman, as a “sukia doctor” and a “sukia healer.” Later missionaries rarely acknowledged the sukias’ medical knowledge or their social role as healer. This is ironic because they understood that providing their own medical care was essential to save the body and the soul of the heathen. Second, the narrative provides a snapshot of northern Miskito villages before missionary work had commenced there. Many of the villages named are not referred to by Moravian authors again for another seventy years, and some are never mentioned: presumably they disappeared, their names were misspelled, or their names changed. Brother Kandler, the carpenter and mission assistant, and Peter Blair, the Negro schoolteacher from Bluefields, made a taxing but fruitful four-week journey to the largely Indian settlements between Bluefields and Cape Gracias a Dios. These villages are some fifty in number. It is certainly to Report on a Journey North in 1859 | 87 be hoped that our beloved readers will form a picture of that country, for at present time that region has been witness to the broad scope and achievement of our mission among the heathens. Accordingly, we present the following account, created by weaving together both men...