i Patrick W. Staib Anthropology This dissertation is approved, and it ...

Chapter 1
Regional Identity Formation and Land Tenure in Las Segovias
from the Colonial Period to the Twentieth Century
Las Segovias’ Native Inhabitants
The first ethnographers entered the northern Nicaraguan provinces of Matagalpa and
Nueva Segovia in the late nineteenth century. They encountered scattered settlements of
horticulturalists and hunter-gatherer communities. Nearby mining operations relied on
Indian labor, and repartimiento policies forced the inhabitants to work on plantations and
ranches (Belt 1911; Ayón 1956).
San Juan del Río Coco did not exist as an independent municipality until the
twentieth century. Nevertheless, prior to official state recognition, this region was well
populated with indigenous settlements, and its location along the Río Coco made it a
significant region for commerce and transportation. A snapshot of this town will help to
situate it in the broader historical and geographical context that follows.
It took almost a century after the arrival of the Spaniards for the Catholic Church
under the Audencia de Guatemala to penetrate the dense forests of Las Segovias. Records
from seventeenth-century Franciscan missions describe a region at the meeting of the Rio
Coco and the Rio Patuca, in the present day Segovias, then known as Tologalpa. Ciudad
Vieja was the regional center and Spanish colonial outpost. The area north of the Rio
Coco, in Honduras, was called Taguzgalpa. The two regions were collectively known as
Tagüisgalpa (Incer 1990: 247).
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