Cruise Through History: Itinerary 07 - Ports of the Pacific Coast of North America with Hawaii

By Sherry Hutt

Begin in Nicaragua with the history of a place made tenuous in the shadow of volcanoes and powerful nations. Among a story of indigenous peoples of Central America, Spanish conquistadors, American industrialists, and politicians, are pirates and a heroic American National Baseball League right fielder. Within a litany of dozens of Nicaraguan pre

• Language: English
• Publisher: Digby Creations
• Release date: Aug 22, 2022
• ISBN: 9781942153313

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

SAILING THROUGH HISTORY OF PACIFIC NORTH AMERICA

In Itinerary VII, Ports of the Pacific Coast of North America, travel north from Nicaragua and Mexico to coastal cities of California, before heading to Vancouver and Victoria, British Columbia. Stop for stories in Juneau, Ketchikan and Sitka, Alaska before heading to Hawaii and stories of exploration of the Pacific Ocean. Stories are drawn from ancient to recent history, showcasing delightful sights to visit and insight to characters leaving their legacy on the landscape. Presented from annals of history, stories illuminate contributions of inspirational actors. In this Itinerary, heroes and heroines plant gardens, write poetry, play baseball, and drive sleds through sub-zero terrain in life-saving dashes, bringing serum to dying children.

Note the long list of Native Peoples of this Itinerary. In each port stories begin with first residents, struggling to maintain culture, which attracts many travelers celebrating preservation of lifeways. Amid beautiful beaches of Mexico and California, breathtaking scenery of Alaska, and the garden of Hawaii are people who protected the environment. Protecting and restoring culture is an ongoing story.

Begin in Nicaragua with Colorful Characters in the history of a place made tenuous in the shadow of volcanoes and powerful nations. Among a story of indigenous peoples of Central America, Spanish conquistadors, American industrialists, and politicians, are pirates and a heroic American National Baseball League right fielder. Within a litany of dozens of Nicaraguan presidents since 1821, there are those who deserve mention for valiant efforts to lead Nicaragua into democracy, among whom is the first female head of state in the western hemisphere. A rich Castilian culture, amid continual political strife, produced a cadre of Nicaraguan poets. Rubén Darío is revered in the Poets’ Corner of the Leon Cathedral, where he is joined by recipients of the Darío Prize in Poetry. Poets of Leon are also daring revolutionaries, priests, and leaders of the modern nation.

Visit colonial hill towns of Mexico, where Aztec culture fled Spanish devastation of Mexico City. Search for the Goddess Woman of the Aztecs from Puerto Vallarta to Izapa, Manzanillo, Zihautenejo, and Puerto Chiapas. Go beyond beach resorts for Colima, Comala, and Chiapas in Mexico, and Comalapa in Guatemala. Among coastal cities Acapulco adds singular flair as the destination port of Manila Galleons, bringing spices of the Philippines to Mexico, enabling Mexican cuisine was we know it.

Prior to statehood, California was the domain of Native Americans, facing Spanish arrivals seeking gold and plantation agriculture. The story of slavery of Native Americans is preserved in California Missions, from San Diego to San Francisco. Mission architecture is the legacy seen in Art and Architecture of Southern California. Spain negotiated the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo with the young United States, a document little understood and contested today. San Francisco has a history of singular personalities from inception.

Enjoy Tea and Gardens in Victoria, a favorite cruise destination for creating a little bit of England in far west Canada. Architects of the palaces and hotels have stories as colorful as their buildings are fanciful. Built on the grounds of First Peoples, Vancouver preserves the story of its first residents as it adds the story of Chinese in North America.

Native People of Alaska have their own story as they faced Russian settlers, whalers, and loggers making a home in gorgeous, yet unforgiving terrain. Having lost control of their land, Native Alaskan tribes and corporations are vibrant players in the modern economy, while preserving art and culture. Politics of Nature in Alaska is a story of the interplay of interests of Native Americans, state and city government, and the federal government. The vastness of the Alaska landscape belies its fragile qualities. The story of the Alaska purchase is told in Sitka, where intrigue and folly collided in the aspirations of Russian and American dreams for the territory. Alaska quickly became the domain of Characters to Match the Outsized Environment. Fur warriors fought early battles and whalers brought the American Civil War to Alaska. Gold miners and fish canning corporations from the lower forty-eight fought Alaska statehood, while they enslaved new generations of Native Alaskans.

Finally, poets came to Alaska painting and writing of the wilderness. Special Agent Ivan Petroff and Lt. Henry Allen walked into the wilderness. Allen found a missing soldier and returned charting the Copper River to its source. Petroff regaled President Rutherford B. Hayes with a story of his trek from Cook Inlet to the Yukon River that never happened. John Muir is the poet of nature responsible for the view of Alaska giving impetus to the United States National Park Service. Muir made four trips to Alaska.

Stories of Hawaii begin with Being Native Hawaiian and move to a Royal History of Hawaii. Until the monarchy was usurped, its assets converted to private use of sugar magnates, Native Hawaiians marginalized, and the last monarch imprisoned, Hawaii was an independent monarchy recognized by the US and President Grover Cleveland. Cook’s Legacy from Monarchy to Statehood is an unpleasant story to tell, yet it is integral to US history. The Little History of Honolulu is seen in city streets and monuments, the beat of the real Honolulu policeman, inspiration for Charlie Chan of books and movies. No visit to Honolulu is complete without a visit to Waikiki Beach of the first king of unified Hawaii, King Kamehameha, and now home to A Vision in Pink: Royal Hawaiian Hotel. If walls of the hotel could talk, they would tell of surfers, hula parties, and famous guests.

This Itinerary ends with two tales for days at sea. Explore the northern Pacific Ocean with Bering, Cook, and Vancouver. Search for a Northeast Passage with English and Russian hopefuls, until success was achieved by a Swedish royal, born in Russian Finland, exiled from his homeland by the Russian leader, until the captain became a Finnish-Russian hero.

As stories float through time and across ports, they leave the traveler with new insight to the Pacific region. New names become like old friends and familiar names are better known and understood. Travel gives insight to life. Read the stories and enjoy the trip!

CTH

Nicaragua Map (public domain)

NICARAGUA

COLORFUL CHARACTERS IN NICARAGUA

Leon Nicaragua from Roof of Leon Cathedral

Nicaragua is a land of green open spaces, lakes, and lagoons, all within view of an active volcano. Sparsely populated, even in contrast to neighbors a fraction of its size, Nicaragua is opening to tourism. Possessi ng five hundred years of European settlement and two hundred years as an independent nation, internal politics are as vibrant as its volcano. Now endeavoring to maintain a stable economy in a peaceful environment, Nicaragua asserts a place among Central America prime time travel destinations.

Few North Americans realize the extent to which the United States was involved in the history of Nicaragua over the last two centuries, after Spain gave up control. Nicaragua is known to most in the US from reading news accounts of turmoil and violence. Over the twentieth century: Nicaragua was a pawn in the US and Soviet Union Cold War; before that it was a venue of banana wars of American private business interests; and it began the century embroiled in canal politics, a competition between the US in Nicaragua and France in Panama. Before the Panama Canal, US had ambitions for a Nicaragua Canal.

Spanish conquistadors came to Nicaragua in a continuing search for gold. They were not disappointed. Nicaragua adds its chapter to the competition of ambitious and violent men, in the name of Spain. Spanish founders of Nicaragua built forts, churches, and the beginnings of city infrastructure on which a nation formed.

Nicaragua attracted adventurers, whose stories add colorful nuance to history, though they left little impact on landscape, or nation formation. Attracted by wealth in Spanish colonial towns, pirates were the scourge of Lake Nicaragua, known as Sweet Sea, for much of the seventeenth and eighteenth century. Young Horatio Nelson came up the San Juan River, on foot, at the head of troops, to test his leadership skills. Prior to the US Civil War, William Walker, a physician-lawyer, began a slave state on the banks of Lake Nicaragua.

This brief look at Nicaragua is light, serious, and fun. It sheds light on a country lesser known to cruise travelers. Among a story of indigenous peoples of Central America, Spanish conquistadors, American industrialists, and politicians, are pirates, opportunists, and a heroic American National Baseball League right fielder. Within a litany of dozens of Nicaraguan presidents since 1821, are those deserving mention for valiant efforts to lead Nicaragua into democracy and enfranchisement of its people. Among leaders is the first female head of state in the western hemisphere. A rich Castilian culture, amid continual political strife, produced a cadre of Nicaraguan poets, whose stories are told separately.

Pre-Colonial Era

Nicaragua is a relatively young nation of the world, with a population history from only the sixth century of the current era, living under a young volcano. Over the first millennium, from 500 to 1519, three distinct groups of people settled in distinct regions, where richness of the environment gave little reason for competition for resources or interaction. The major threat to life was earthquakes and volcanic eruption.

Street in Leon

From 500 CE, people came south from Central Mexico, and north from Colombia. They were joined by people floating to Caribbean shores. The people from Colombia were of, or related to, Muisca people; people of ceremony where kings dusted with gold, bathed in a lake, becoming genesis of legends of El Dorado.

Chontal Maya people, known by their language Yokot’an, moved into mountainous areas of Nicaragua from Guatemala and Honduras. Chontal was the name given by Spanish arrivals. In Spanish, Chontal is foreigner.

Central lowlands of Nicaragua were home to people identified by Mangue language. When Spanish arrived, Mangue were a large group, distinguishable from Chontal and Niquirano peoples. Niquirano lived along the Pacific coast to Lake Nicaragua. Chief of Niquirano, Macuilmiquiztli greeted Spanish ships on Pacific shores in 1519.

Spanish arrivals in Nicaragua, as elsewhere in the Americas, brought disease, which decimated indigenous populations. Identities of early groups blurred, as survivors merged in native communities. When the Spanish brought African slaves to Nicaragua, African escapees joined natives on the Caribbean coast, which over the centuries became bands of Afro-Indigenous Miskito people. Miskito competed with Mangue for haven along the Caribbean coast, rendering it the Mosquito Coast. Diaries of Caribbean pirates noted Miskito comrades for physical strength and endurance.

Spanish Colony and a Few Pirates

Spaniard Gil Gonzáles Dávila is credited as the first European landing in Nicaragua in 1519. He named the land he hoped to govern, Nicaragua, in part, for lovely lakes and lagoons. Delighted to find natives in possession of gold, the conquistador confiscated booty, as he battled locals, from whom he fled to Panama.

Once Gonzáles Dávila arrived in Panama, the founder of Panama City, and powerful Spanish governor, Pedrarias Dávila, relived Gil of his gold. The governor lived up to his reputation as Pedrarias the Cruel, the man who led Balboa to an early grave.¹

Among gold-seeking Spanish was Francisco Hernandez de Córdoba. He floated up the San Juan River to Lake Nicaragua and founded the town of Granada. He also founded Leon on the Pacific Coast. Today currency of Nicaragua is the Cordoba in his honor.

In clashes between indigenous people of the New World and Spanish conquistadors, the Spanish always prevailed, if not in battle, then through attrition due to disease. Once conquistadors vanquished locals, they fought among themselves. Supreme in an ability to use cunning, deceit, and force, Pedrarias usually emerged victorious. Pedrarias relieved Hernandez de Córdoba of his gold and territory. He made Leon his headquarters. By 1570, Leon was the capital of New Spain in the Pacific region.

Through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in Nicaragua, Spanish slave economies flourished, threatened only by volcanic eruption and intermittent arrival of pirates on Lake Nicaragua. In 1610, Leon was devastated by an eruption. Lake pirates came next.

Welshman Henry Morgan, scourge of Panama, came up the San Juan River in canoes in 1665. Along the Mosquito coast, Morgan added Miskito sailors to his unsavory cadre. Morgan respected Miskito men for vigor and strength under every adverse experience.

English pirate, William Dampier, arrived on the Pacific coast of Nicaragua in 1655. His targets were Leon and Granada. Dampier left maps and diaries of his exploits. Ships of the British royal navy came to the Mosquito Coast a century later in 1762. The British enlisted or conscripted Miskito sailors, as they assessed Nicaragua as a British asset.

Morgan and Dampier sacked and burned the lakeside Spanish city of Granada. In response, the Spanish built the stone Fortress of the Immaculate Conception. Even instruments of war received church blessings. The fortress was built in two years from 1673 to 1675. The fort saw little action. It stands today as a monument to the colonial era.

One man who tested Spanish defenses was a young Horatio Nelson. At age twenty-three and already experienced as a captain, Nelson displayed bravery in his previously untested ability to lead soldiers in a land-assault. The ultimate British objective in 1780, to capture the fort and establish British cross-oceanic control of commerce, was not achieved. Spain held firm on its monopoly to transfer goods from the Pacific to Atlantic via Lake Nicaragua and the San Juan River. By his efforts at the head of the landing party, Nelson succeeded in beginning his ascent to British national hero.

Dynamics of Leon and Granada with William Walker Opportunist in Chaos

Nicaragua achieved independence from Spain in 1821, as part of the First Empire of Mexico. In 1823, Nicaragua broke with Mexico to form United Provinces of Central America in the model of the United States of America, or Gran Colombia, the union of nations of South America. By 1838, Nicaragua was a fully independent republic.

Portrait of William Walker by George Dury (public domain)

Once Nicaragua gained political identity, it became fractured in ideology of clan interests. One faction dominated the city of Leon and the other dominated the city of Granada. Supporters gravitated to their city of choice. Often at odds, the two factions ripped the republic into civil war three times, between the 1840s and 1926. Frequently, national presidents stepped down, or were assassinated, within a year of taking office. In the first thirty years of the republic, there were thirty transitions in heads of state.

Into the chaos rode American William Walker in 1855. He was in control of the republic by 1856, ousted in 1857, and, failing to take no for an answer, he returned in 1860. He was captured, with the aid of the American navy, which turned Walker over to Honduran officials, who dispatched Walker in 1860 by firing squad. The brief, misguided adventures of Walker, a footnote in the greater history of Nicaragua, are a colorful bit of Mexican/Nicaraguan lore.

William Walker was a brilliant student, born in Nashville, Tennessee in 1824, who attained a law degree from the University of Nashville, when he was fourteen. By the age of nineteen, Walker achieved a medical degree, which included study at universities of Edinburgh and Heidelberg, scions of medical science. He was in San Francisco, working as editor of the San Francisco Herald, when gold was discovered. As he watched states declare for or against slavery, Walker was an adamant supporter of slavery. Discontented with California abolitionist views, he formed a plan.

Walker had a reckless spirit. He enjoyed duels. Once he engaged in a dual outside Mission Delores, in the same park where San Franciscans of today enjoy sun, yoga, and protest movements. Walker was shot twice. Though Walker’s gun failed to fire, he did not want to end the dual.

Walker requested Mexico grant him land in the state of Sonora, or Baja, to establish an English-speaking slave state, under his control. Mexico declined. Undeterred, Walker solicited subscriptions for land in Mexico from Americans, pleased to join him.

Walker led a small private army into Mexico and declared himself president of the Republic of Sonora, with a capital at Ensenada, and president of the Republic of Lower California, with his capital at Cabo, at the tip of Baja. Mexico chased Walker and friends back to north of the border. The US charged Walker with violations of the Neutrality Act. Walker stood trial in which he was acquitted by jury in less than ten minutes.

In the 1850s, discovery of gold in California renewed importance of a cross-oceanic transit across Nicaragua. Cornelius Vanderbilt obtained permission from the government to run a steamship service from the Caribbean coast to Lake Nicaragua, and transfer passengers and goods from lakeside to the Pacific port of Rivas. The business was in full swing when civil war erupted between Leon and Granada. The Leon faction invited Walker to invade.

Walker Execution by Firing Squad (Public Domain)

Walker brought his private army to attack Granada, seize control of the city, and seize Vanderbilt steamships on the San Juan River. In 1856, Walker proclaimed himself president of Nicaragua. US President Franklin Pierce recognized the Walker regime.

Walker went too far when he seized Vanderbilt assets. The mighty transportation mogul raised his own agents, who aligned with the Costa Rica government against Walker. Troops of allied Central American republics battled Walker’s troops in 1857. By the end of the year, Walker burned his headquarters, and much of Granada, before he ran back to the US. When Walker returned for an encore in 1860, allied Central American troops and the US Navy were waiting for him. His final visit was brief and ended with surrender. At age thirty-six, Walker was executed by firing squad.

Britain controlled the Mosquito Coast in 1850. Britain gave its land interests to Honduras. The map of Nicaragua, as it appears today, was not finally achieved until 1894. In that year, American marines landed on the Mosquito Coast.

Overt American/Nicaraguan Era: 1894-1933

U.S. Marines Holding Sandino’s Flag- Nicaragua 1932 (public domain)

Late nineteenth and early twentieth century Central America and US relations were marked by Banana Wars. Private American interests, harvesting bananas in Central American countries for sale in the US, sought aid of the US military against interference from labor unions and local Central American politicians sympathetic with workers.² In Nicaragua, President José Santos Zelaya was a populist leader, whose nationalist actions threatened American banana interests. In 1894, shortly after the Nicaraguan president obtained the Mosquito coast within Nicaragua, the US landed marines at Bluefields Bay.

From 1894 to 1910, US Marines landed five times, on both Nicaraguan coasts, to quell uprisings, labor and political, adverse to banana companies. In 1909, President Zelaya executed two Americans convicted of planting explosives on the San Juan River. US-supported rebels ended the Zelaya presidency in 1912. He was succeeded by mining executive Adolfo Diaz. Diaz invited US military into Nicaragua to protect Americans.

During this time, US negotiated with Nicaragua to build a canal from Lake Nicaragua to Rivas, providing the first uninterrupted, intra-oceanic transit, through the Americas. Ultimately, the US transferred efforts to Panama, when the French offered a reasonable sales price for its aborted operations.³ No longer of strategic importance, US military occupation of Nicaragua continued.

Civil War erupted in Nicaragua in 1926, between the US backed president and the contender in exile. A resolution was reached in 1927, between competing generals. The only Nicaraguan military leader who refused to sign the pact was Augusto César Sandino.

Somoza/Sandino and an American Hall of Fame Hero

Roberto Clemente 1965 (public domain)

The US vacated Nicaragua in 1933, leaving Anastasio Somoza Garcia in control of the country. Somoza hunted Sandino, until he was captured and executed in 1934. Somoza and his sons remained in control of Nicaragua, supported by the US, until 1979. The elder Somoza increased his power to a dictator. When he was assassinated in 1956, by a poet from Leon, his son Luis Somoza Debayle immediately took power. Somoza Debayle was president until 1963. His brother Anastasio Somoza Debayle ruled Nicaragua, until 1979.

The Cuban revolution in 1960 was an inspiration to followers of Sandino, known as Sandinistas, rivals to Somoza. Fidel Castro usurped the US supported dictatorial president of Cuba, just as the Sandinistas wished to remove anyone named Somoza. When in 1972, an earthquake leveled ninety percent of Managua, the capital city, and ten thousand people died, while five hundred thousand were rendered homeless, the third Somoza president, Anastasio Somoza Debayle was exposed as inept and self-interested.

The hero, who came to Nicaragua with food for starving victims of the quake, was Roberto Clemente, right fielder for the Pittsburg Pirates. Clemente, born in 1934 in Puerto Rico, was a US Marine Corps veteran. He was best known for a sustained batting average over .300 in thirteen seasons of All-Star play and for his efforts to aide Latino people.

When personally delivering food in tropical Nicaragua, Clemente’s plane crashed. He was killed. The next year, Clemente was voted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.

In the Somoza effort to destroy Sandinistas, the government bombed Leon, a Sandino stronghold. In 1979, President Jimmy Carter withdrew support for the Somoza government. Anastasio Somoza was denied entry to the US, when he fled his country. Somoza left barely two million dollars in the national treasury when he went to Paraguay, where he was assassinated in 1979.

Covert America, Cold War, and Embargo - Ortega and Chamorro

Violeta Chamorro and Daniel Ortega 1990 (public domain)

In a leadership void, Nicaragua was governed by a junta, a group of interests. Among the junta, Sandinista Daniel Ortega, then age thirty-three, was a most charismatic leader. In 1984, in a democratic election, sixty-four percent of voters supported Ortega.

Daniel Ortega came from a working-class family. His credo was socialism and change to benefit all Nicaraguans. The economy was fragile. To provide social services, the nation assumed massive debt. Ortega looked to the US and Cuba for support.

The US, focused on the possible spread of Communism, considered Nicaragua support for rebels in El Salvador a threat. The US imposed a trade embargo on Nicaragua. Ortega turned to Soviet-backed Cuba. Thus, began US covert support for counter-Sandinista regime forces, or Contras. Nicaragua became a pawn in the US-Soviet Cold War.

US Colonel Oliver North devised a scheme for US President Ronald Reagan to use funds from sales of weapons to Iran to support Contra forces in Nicaragua. The Iran-Contra Affair was exposed, even as President Reagan met with the Soviet Premier to end the Cold War. The escapades of Oliver North shocked the world. In 1986, the International Court of Justice in the Hague condemned the US and awarded Nicaragua damages.⁴

In subsequent Nicaraguan presidential elections, Ortega was an unsuccessful candidate. The old Leon/Granada factions are ever present in the country, which keeps a stable course, moving between center-left and center-right administrations. Ortega’s next presidency came in 2007.

Ortega was succeeded in 1990 by Violeta Chamorro, the first female head of state in the western hemisphere. Born