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

Translator’s Note

Translator’s Note Terry Rugeley Seventeen of the entries of this text are direct reproductions of English-language sources. The remaining fourteen entries, constituting approximately two-thirds of the total material, are drawn directly from the original nineteenth-century German. While the actual prose translates readily enough into modern English, a few irregularities do crop up along the way. Sentences and paragraphs tended to be much longer in the authors’ day, and I have taken the liberty of breaking up both in the interest of greater accessibility. Moreover, Moravian authors occasionally varied in the way that they spelled the names of people and places along Central America’s Caribbean coast. When writing in German most missionaries used the term “Moskito,” or in one case “Mosquito,” to refer to the peoples who wrote their name “Miskito” until the 1980s, and “Miskitu” today. In this and similar cases (Sumu, Rama, and so forth) I have retained the authors’ usage. In reference to place, the authors wrote either “Moskitoland” or, more commonly , “Moskito.” I have left the former as is, but to distinguish the latter from either the people or language of the same name, this translation uses “Moskito [territory].” Again, I have followed the usage of each individual author, including the inconsistencies within individual entries. Finally, for their occasional biblical quotations I have borrowed the King James version. This decision might not have been to their theological liking, but the King James Bible still provides a standard for nineteenth-century English rhetoric. The rather inflexible nineteenth-century Moravians could occasionally say a good word about Catholics and Spaniards, and it is our hope that they would have extended the same spirit of indulgence to this translation. The Awakening Coast ...