Black & White Film photography, 1960, Rev. Josephenie Restoration, 2021, Jordy Hansack Digital Colorized editing, 2021, Ercel V.M. Hendy Twaska Fleurima The first reference to the Miskitu Indians was a “small nation” by Alexandre Exquemelin, a Dutch pirate who regularly stopped along the Coast for provisions in 1685. English, Dutch, and French pirates who visited the area commented on the well-established social, commercial, and military ties between European pirates and the inhabitants of the Cape Gracias a Dios area. In 1699, an English trader stated - “They live peacefully together in several families, yet accounting all Indians of one tongue, to be the same people and friends, and are in quality all equal, neither king nor captains of families bearing any more command than the meanest unless it be at such times when they make any expeditions against the Alboawinneys; at that time they submit to the conduct and obey the orders of their kings and captains.”

 History is written by the victors and conquerors, many times ignoring the facts of reality. Nowhere is it outright acknowledged a fact that black people had arrived in the New World before Christopher Columbus, and so they made the narrative of shipwrecked slaves the ONLY history to accommodate the presence of human beings they never expected to meet and had arrived first.