32 



Doc. No. 75. 



hundred dollars, and afterwards one thousand six hundred and fifty dol- 

 lars of annual salary. 



There are other innumerable acts proving the relation and dependence 

 of the Mosquitos on the Spanish authorities, especially in this State, 

 among which maybe added the marriage of their chief, (Carlos Castilla,) 

 at the end of the last century, to Donna Maria Rodriguez, of the district 

 of Chartales, whose eldest son obtained the grade and pay of captain 

 under the Spanish government, whose tutor was the governor intendant 

 of this province, who was a student in the Tridentine Seminary of this 

 city, and, in the year 1827, served among the troops of the supreme chief 

 of this State, Don Manuel Antonio Cenda, under the republican system. 



On these firm grounds, the national constitution of 1824 says, in its 

 fifth article: The territory of this republic is the same formerly com- 

 prised in the old kingdom of Guatemala, with the exception, for the 

 present, of the province of Chiapas." The constitution of this State, on 

 the 12th of November, 1838, declares, in its second article: The terri- 

 tory of the State is the same as formerly comprised in the province of 

 Nicaragua. Its limits are: on the east smd northeast, the Caribbean sea; 

 on the north and northwest, the State of Honduras; on the west and 

 south, the Pacific ocean; and on the southeast, the State of Costa Rica. 

 The lines dividing it from the other adjoining States shall be determined 

 by a law, which shall form a part of this constitution." It is, therefore, 

 evident that neither Spain, nor Central America, nor iNicaragua, has 

 recognised any Mosquito Territory, or State, though they cultivated 

 friendship with those Indians and their chiefs with a view of civilizing 

 them, and that the consideration so frequently shown by the Spanish au- 

 thorities for the Mosquito Indian you call a prince were by no means 

 proofs of recognition. 



For these reasons, all documents which have been produced from the 

 Britisli colonial archives, without notice to or information from the au- 

 thorities of Nicaragua and other Central American States, are null, and 

 the opinions which the British government founded upon them are erro- 

 neous, as that government could never have meant to recognise as a 

 State a horde of savages, wanting all the constituent principles of a sov- 

 ereign society, and especially a constitution, such as to give them legiti- 

 mately a form and Territory. What is here submitted to your enlightened 

 judgment will suffice to convince you how trivial and illegal are the 

 grounds on which the high and respected government of her Britannic 

 Majesty has been made to believe in the existence of a Mosquito State 

 with a king and a Territory. But although certain British subjects may 

 have endeavored, for their own interests, to legitimize their pretensions to 

 certain points on the coast inhabited by the Mosquitos, and have pre- 

 pared a dispute on those points of the Nicaraguan and Central American 

 territory, there can be no question as to the port of San Juan del Norte, in 

 this State, from which the administrator, Colonel Quijano, was removed. 



The idea that the Mosquitos could pretend to have a right to a point 

 comprehended in that port itself, is not a declaration which could have 

 excluded it from the dominion and ancient possession by Nicaragua in it^» 

 whole extent. The population, the preservation of the authorities, the 

 trade, the use of the lands, waters, and other properties of the port, are 

 the means by which its possession has been administered and enjoyed by 

 this State ; and thus any order to transfer offices from one part to another 



