Students of Central American populations will welcome this, the first modern social anthropological study of a Miskito population. It combines some historical materials with a good account of the current social organization and cultural life of a single Miskito Community. The coverage is fairly standard, and is particularly valuable on matters pertaining to the changing relations of the Miskito with other population segments.
The Miskito are not a clear-cut cultural derivative of any currently identifiable indigenous social unit. While their language is clearly of indigenous origin, the particular nature of their social organization and mode of adaptation has been such as to constantly introduce new cultural content. They have survived as a distinctive social grouping because the continuity lies in the passing on of culture by mothers to children. Miskito women have married outside men for generations, and as such, have taken over many new traits. These traits are recombined within the Miskito household and passed on as a part of the “correct” traditions. Thus, over the centuries, the Miskito have seen the incursions of many kinds of Europeans, interested in various phases of Miskitia, and in some sense, each has probably effected some change in Miskito life and custom. Their isolation from Spanish Nicaragua and Honduras, however, has allowed the Miskito to successfully readapt to each succeeding pressure and survive as a distinctive cultural component.
The volume poses a number of interesting cultural questions; historians will find it goes far in filling a void in the Central American historico-cultural landscape.
