Imprints on Native Lands: The Miskito-Moravian Settlement Landscape in Honduras

7. Uncommon Ground: The Material Culture of Miskito Cemeteries

why study cemeteries? Cemeteries are important components of the religious landscape, and scholars classify them as sacred space (Tuan 1978). According to Fred Kniffen (1967), cemeteries preserve past traditions and folkways because they are space that is set apart and used very little by the living. They reflect traditional values and religious beliefs, as well as economic and social status through the medium of material culture. The material culture of cemeteries varies geographically and by ethnicity (Jordan 1982, 1993; Jordan-Bychkov 2003). I agree with Francaviglia (1971b:509), who wrote, “Cemeteries, as the visual and spatial expression of death, may tell us a great deal about the living people who created them.” In this chapter, I will discuss traditional Miskito burial customs, Moravian interventions, and locational aspects of Honduran Miskito cemeteries. I will also examine items of material culture currently present in Honduran Miskito cemeteries and, where possible, identify their historical antecedents. Traditional Miskito Burial Customs According to Bell ([1899] 1989) and Conzemius (1932), upon the death of an individual, women closely related to the deceased tried to injure themselves by banging their heads on posts, or they attempted suicide by hanging or drowning. Conzemius claimed that these efforts to injure themselves were not sincere, as they knew others nearby would prevent them. Bell (1862, [1899] 1989) recorded that females near the deceased also cut off their hair so that the dead individual would be the last person to have touched it. The Miskito considered the mentioning of a dead person in the presence of his or her relatives an offense. In the evening following a death, the entire village participated in a wake by butchering chapter 7 Uncommon Ground The Material Culture of Miskito Cemeteries a cow and consuming food and alcohol. The women also took turns wailing over the body of the deceased, “crying” the history of the person and proclaiming the individual’s good qualities. The Moravian missionary George Heath described a wake in Kaurkira, Honduras, as an “all-night dance before the funeral. If possible a gramophone is borrowed, and the dancing and feasting takes place in the presence of the corpse” (Kaurkira Station Report 1933:2). In one of the earliest accounts of Miskito customs, Esquemelin ([1684] 1951) described how Miskito women exhumed the bodies of their husbands. A Miskito widow would open the grave about a year after the death of her husband, and then scrape the remaining tissue off the bones to wash and dry them in the sun. The widow would then wrap the bones in a satchel and carry them on her back during the daytime and sleep with them at night for another year. Only then was she allowed to remarry . Writing in the 1700s, Sloane (1740) and Jefferys ([1762] 1970) reported that the Miskito sewed their dead in tunu bark cloth and placed them in the grave standing up, facing east. Still others reported that the Miskito were buried in canoes that were cut in half and utilized as the top and bottom of a coffin (W. [1699] 1732; Bell ([1899] 1989; Conzemius 1932). Nineteenth-century writers described Miskito graves as having a shelter or “grave shed” under which plates of food and possessions of the deceased were placed (Ziock 1881; Bell [1899] 1989). Formerly, surviving family members destroyed the deceased’s possessions , including cattle, canoes, plantations, and fruit trees, so that the living would not use them and thus anger the spirit of the dead (W. [1699] 1732; Conzemius 1932). Moravian missionaries widely discouraged this practice, considering it an important cause of poverty, because the Miskito did not pass on property through inheritance (Smith 1877; Ziock 1881; Werner Marx, pers. comm., July 16, 1998). Later, Conzemius (1932) reported that the family kept the majority of the deceased’s property, and only on occasion did they bury or leave less valuable items on top of the grave (which they broke to prevent stealing). Following burial, sometimes as long as nine days, family asked a sukia, or Miskito shaman, to catch the isingni, or spirit of the departed. Moravian missionaries often found themselves in conflict with the sukias, who played the traditional shamanistic role in Miskito society. Missionaries opposed sukias because these shamans perpetuated “superstitious” 118 CHAPTER 7 and “heathen,” non-Christian traditions. One such tradition was the capturing of the isingni. Miskito believed the spirit remained near the bed of the deceased individual and...