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

16. Kaisa! Travel to Nicaragua, 1886

16 Kaisa! Travel to Nicaragua, 1886 Hermann G. Schneider, Kaisa! Nach schriftlichen und mündlichen Mitteilungen Missionar Siebörger’s [Kaisa! According to Missionary Siebörger’s Written and Oral Communications] (Stuttgart: R. Roth, 1890). This seven-chapter pamphlet is among the most important large Moravian texts not previously available in English. As Hermann Schneider documents in his editorial introduction, the work is derived from the experiences of Wilhelm Siebörger during an evangelical trip to Dakura, outside the Mosquito Reserve, in 1886 (see also nos. 14 and 15). The Great Awakening had already occurred, and missionaries were concerned that the successes made in Nicaragua would get away from them if they could not properly attend their flock. Dakura did not become a mission station until the Jamaican layman John A. Fischer and the German Ernst Gottlieb Gebhardt moved there in 1893. Dakura was the first and only Moravian mission station to form outside the Reserve when the Reserve was still in existence. As Siebörger explains late in his story, the residents of Wounta Haulover (Ephrata)—where he was stationed in 1886—originated from Dakura. This social bond between the two communities helps explain why Siebörger made his earlier trip to Dakura in 1883 and why he was visiting again. Siebörger returned to Germany on furlough in 1888 and there met with Schneider, who compiled and edited the piece before us. Although the pamphlet purports to describe the details of a two-week trip to Nicaragua, in actuality it represents a fifteen-year Mosquitia memoir wrapped around a two-week trip. Siebörger returned to the Mosquito Reserve in 1890, and in 1892 he came to serve as mission superintendent until his retirement in 1899. Kaisa! Travel to Nicaragua | 173 Introduction The journey described in the following pages took place between February 16 and March 2 of the year 1886. Missionary Siebörger, briefly in Europe with the aim of recovering his broken health, took the opportunity to jot down his experiences of that period in a brief report that he kept within a small circle. Upon further recollection, he resolved to enhance this report with certain additions, the contents of which he subsequently sketched out in writing. These sketches ultimately came into my hands; I studied them, then sought out the esteemed traveler at his residence of that time, and had a long and exhaustive conversation with him. In the course of the same we were able to clarify, restore, or append many points that had been omitted owing to what was deemed the excessive brevity of the initial work. I was then able to produce a new version that combined the original report, the additions, and the points made in conversation. Moreover, the finished manuscript was reviewed by missionary Wilhelm Peper, who also worked for several years in Moskito [territory], and to whom we owe credit for drawing up the appended map [see fig. 16.1].1 (Missionary Siebörger has also submitted this map to careful review.) Both of these individuals have expressed themselves entirely satisfied with the final manuscript’s contents, and missionary Siebörger vouches emphatically for the work’s veracity. The reader may therefore understand the origins of this manuscript’s information, and will be tempered against the suspicion that all he has before him is possibly nothing but a product fashioned on some European writing desk, and one that the author for technical reasons found convenient to place in the mouth of a missionary. Since the time of our conversation, missionary Siebörger has returned once more to the area of his activities in Moskito [territory]. In keeping with his altogether modest and retiring nature, it has cost him no small effort to come before the public with the following pages. In exchange for this sacrifice he would very much wish to discover that, through the blessings of the Lord, these sketches have helped to win new friends for his Indians, true collaborators for his work, and optimistic and deeply pious helpers for the Kingdom of God. Herrnhut, April 1890 H. G. Schneider Fig. 16.1. Moskito-Küste (Leipzig). From Schneider, Quamwatla (see no. 31). Note the projected routes of two different transisthmus projects: a canal through the Río San Juan and a rail line from Monkey Point in southern Mosquitia to Nicaraguan cities in the west. Also note that the Mosquito Reserve is still prominently...