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

1. Extract of a Letter from H. G. Pfeiffer, 1849

1 Extract of a Letter from H. G. Pfeiffer, 1849 “Extract of a Letter from Br. H. G. Pfeiffer,” Periodical Accounts Relating to the Missions of the Church of the United Brethren Established among the Heathen 19 (1849): 201–3. This short letter “comes from the first superintendent of the Moravian mission in Mosquitia, H. G. Pfeiffer. Born in 1798 in Magdeburg, Germany, Pfeiffer was trained as a cobbler and had been a missionary in Jamaica for twenty-two years before coming to Bluefields. Moravian Church historians and later missionaries are surprisingly critical of Pfeiffer because he was content to stay in Bluefields, preach to Creoles in English, and wait for Indians to come and settle. When mission director Heinrich Rudolf Wullschlägel visited the Mosquitia in 1855 he stressed the need to preach where the Indians lived and in the Miskito language. In effect his report led to Pfeiffer’s forced retirement in 1856.1 Pfeiffer’s letter illustrates the slow start of the Moravian mission and reminds us that the church began as an urban institution that catered principally to Creoles, blacks, and foreign whites. The letter, written at Bluefields on April 23, 1849, also helps us understand how the Miskito royal family became so closely associated with the Moravian missionaries. Of the three sisters of the Miskito king George Augustus Frederic (r. 1845–64), Victoria was the mother of two future Miskito “hereditary chiefs”—as the kings were called after 1860—William Henry Clarence (r. 1866–79) and Robert Henry Clarence (r. 1893–94), and Matilda was the mother of hereditary chief Jonathan Charles Frederic (r. 1888–89). 42 | Extract of a Letter from H. G. Pfeiffer We [the Periodical Accounts editors] continue our extracts from Brother Pfeiffer’s correspondence, detailing the progress of the work in which himself and his fellow-servants are engaged; a work on which our gracious Lord has thus far evidently smiled. The cordial reception and the kind assistance they have experienced from her Majesty’s Consul-General, Mr. Christie, and the Vice-Consul, Dr. Green, deserve very grateful acknowledgment.2 Dear Brother, Though my time is very limited today, and I find myself frequently interrupted by matters of business, I feel it to be a duty, which I owe to the good and blessed cause in which we have the privilege to be engaged, to give you some account of our proceedings, the more so as I well remember the warm-hearted sympathy, zeal, and disinterested benevolence which so many of our dear Christian friends in England manifest towards this infant Mission.3 Though but recently commenced, our Mission on this coast presents to the devout Christian, who prays that “the forces of the Gentiles may come unto the Lord,” some pleasing and interesting features; while, on the other hand, the extreme degradation of these benighted Indians will not only excite sympathy and earnest prayer, but will prove a new call to all who love the Lord Jesus Christ “not to be weary in well-doing.” Oh! could but our dear Christian friends at home see with their own eyes God’s creatures, once formal in His own image, and redeemed with the precious blood of Christ, but now—Oh, what a mournful sight! what a heart-rending spectacle to a reflecting mind!—debased by carnal lusts, living without God, without hope, without even the idea of a life hereafter, it could not fail to pierce their hearts. I will now proceed to give you a few additional particulars respecting our proceedings on this coast. Finding it needful to see the British Consul General, Mr. Christie, and to converse with him on various subjects relating to our Mission, I accompanied the king and Dr. Green, on the twenty-third ult[imate], to St. Juan, now called Grey-town, after Sir Charles Grey, the Governor of Jamaica. On the twenty-fifth, while Brother Lundberg preached at Bluefields, I proclaimed the Gospel at Extract of a Letter from H. G. Pfeiffer | 43 Grey-town to a pretty numerous congregation, of which a number of Americans formed part, who, having been infected by the Californian gold-fever, were on their way to those parts.4 Mr. Christie arrived in the steamer on the twenty-seventh.5 He was very friendly, and promised to do all in his power for the promotion of our object. For the liberal aid afforded us towards the...