Ulwas

The Ulwa are the southernmost of the Misumalpan-speaking peoples grouped under the name Mayangna, or Sumu, living along the rivers of eastern Nicaragua, above all around the Río Grande de Matagalpa. The name ulwa first appears in a Spanish document of 1586.

When the English reached the Mosquito Coast in the 1630s, the Ulwa and their Mayangna kin held much of the coast and its interior. Firearms traded to the Miskito then turned the balance of power: Miskito raiding parties carried off Ulwa captives for sale in Jamaica and forced a retreat upriver, while coastal survivors paid tribute to the Miskito king crowned by the English in 1660.

Through the eighteenth century the Ulwa kept to remote river basins, living by shifting cultivation, hunting and fishing, as their language came under growing pressure from Miskito.