Rama

The Rama are a Chibchan-speaking people of Nicaragua's Caribbean coast, formed from Indigenous communities between Bluefields and the San Juan. Spanish power settled over Pacific Nicaragua, but this shore remained beyond its reach. In the seventeenth century English privateers allied with the Miskito, arming them for raids on Spanish settlements and weaker Indigenous groups.

In the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries Miskito war parties raided as far south as Costa Rica, carrying captives into slavery and reducing neighbours such as the Rama to clients. The British formalized this overlordship in 1740, creating the Mosquito Coast protectorate.

Rama oral tradition holds that in the eighteenth century the Miskito gave them Rama Cay in return for help against the Naso of Costa Rica. The Rama retreated to the island and river villages, sustaining themselves by farming and fishing; their dugout dories earned them a reputation as the coast's best boatmen.