In his 2006 Transatlantic Encounters: American Indians in Britain, 1500–1776, Alden Vaughan devotes a single page to the Miskitu embassy that arrived in London in January of 1775. This is unfortunate. Sent by the Miskitu king to apprise the British Government of usury trade practices by British subjects in the western Caribbean, the embassy included four Miskitu leaders, including Duke Isaac, the author of our letter, two captive Ngäbé Indians from today’s Panama, and other Indigenous peoples. Throughout much of the seventeenth and through the early nineteenth centuries, the Miskitu of eastern Central America, or Mosquitia, traveled widely with northern Europeans, including in the Pacific; several had visited Britain prior to 1775, and many would after this date as well.1
Before looking more closely at Isaac’s letter, it is worth knowing more about the Miskitu and why their king, George I, sent his brother, Duke Isaac, his son,...
