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

6. A Visit to the Tungla Indians of Walpasiksa River, 1869

6 A Visit to the Tungla Indians of WalpasiksaRiver, 1869 Report from Brother Grunewald, Magdala, July 21, 1869, Periodical Accounts Relating to the Missions of the Church of the United Brethren 27 (1869): 252–54. Friedrich Edward Grunewald was born in Germany in 1828 and came to Mosquitia in 1857 as a language specialist, another outcome of the visit by mission director Wullschlägel in 1855 (see no. 1). He was ordained in 1869 and remained in Mosquitia until 1876. He was best known for working with the Jamaican Peter Blair to produce the first Miskito dictionary and for translating Bible stories from Old and New Testaments used in mission schools. He also played a lead role, again with Blair, in translating the Gospels into the Miskito language in the 1860s, a precursor to the first published version in 1888. Grunewald spent most of his time in Mosquitia in Pearl Lagoon. It was from here that he and his Creole colleagues departed to evangelize among the Tungla Indians along the Río Walpasiksa, or “river of the black rock,” in Miskito.1 The Tungla are an enigmatic indigenous group who are rarely mentioned in the eighteenth or twentieth centuries. Charles Bell, who met with many Tungla as a young man in the mid-nineteenth century, called them “a colony of the Mosquito Indians living a riverine life.” He also termed them “a nondescript people” who “claim to be the same as the Mosquito Indians, but although they speak the Mosquito language, they do not quite resemble the Mosquito men.” Bell adds that they do not resemble the Sumu, or Mayangna, Indians either, but he seems to reject the idea that they are Miskito by saying that “no Mosquito Indian can live far from the sea.”2 In an earlier publication, Bell suggests A Visit to the Tungla Indians of Walpasiksa River | 111 that the Tungla “seem to be a mixed race between the Smoos [Sumu] and Mosquito Indians, and their dialect is nearly pure Mosquito with a large mixture of Smoo words. . . . [Yet,] they never construct such large and comfortable houses as the Smoos and Twakas.”3 In all probability , the Tungla were Tawira Miskito who retired up the Prinzapolka and Walpasiksa Rivers during the early eighteenth century, perhaps intermarrying or trading with the Mayangna of those rivers, and in any case culturally diverging from the Tawira Miskito. On the important map named in the title of Bell’s 1862 paper, the Prinzapolka River is in fact named the “Toongla River.” Meanwhile, several maps from the eighteenth century identify a “Tongla River” connected to or part of the Prinzapolka River, or locate “Tongla Indians” at points along the upper Prinzapolka River.4 In any case, Brother Grunewald and his party traveled four days upriver from the mouth of the Walpasiksa River and, just above the first rapids, encountered the Tungla village of Kamiwalpa (see fig. 6.1). Even from the brief description provided, we get a sense of how the Moravians went about proselytizing and how the Indians viewed them. First the missionaries distinguished themselves from white traders, then they gathered all the people (a powerful act in its own right), recited scripture from a book in the Miskito language, sang, deployed Miskito-speaking natives and Creole converts as exemplars, and, above all, illustrated their message with pictures. Indians peppered the missionaries with questions, and the missionaries replied to them in the Miskito language. In the month of October of last year [1868], some Indians of the Tungla tribe visited at this place, and begged us very earnestly to go and teach them from the Word of God. A variety of circumstances, added to very unfavourable weather, prevented us from carrying out our intention of complying with this request until the month of May in this year. After bidding adieu for a while to our little flock, at a meeting in the burial-ground, at which Brother Smith, our coloured teacher, presided, all uniting in commending us to the Lord’s guidance and protection, we left about 5 p.m., and had soon 112 | A Visit to the Tungla Indians of Walpasiksa River sailed across the shallow lagoon. Our party consisted of the native helper Mitchel, another brother, whose acquaintance with the Indian languages was likely to prove useful, and also two boatmen. The Wind was most favourable as we rounded Pearl Key Point, where we held our...