# Matagalpa and Chontal Highlanders (c. 1450)

URL: https://allhistories.com/nicaragua/timeline/1450-matagalpa-and-chontal-highlanders
Location: Matagalpa, Nicaragua
Themes: main-event

Between the Mesoamerican Pacific and the Caribbean forests lay the rugged highlands of the present departments of Matagalpa, Jinotega, Estelí, Nueva Segovia, Boaco and Chontales. Their pine and cloud forests, river valleys and gold-bearing streams were home to peoples whom the Nahuas lumped together as Chontales. The best known are the Matagalpa, whose language belonged to the Misumalpan family together with Miskito, Mayangna and Cacaopera, spoken across the border in El Salvador. They lived in dispersed villages, grew maize, beans and root crops, hunted and fished, and worked gold. Their political units were small and they had a reputation as fierce warriors who resisted Spanish penetration of the north for decades. Colonial sources record frequent revolts in the Segovias, and the Matagalpa language was still spoken in the eighteenth century before dying out. The highland peoples are poorly documented compared with the Nahua and Chorotega, but they formed the backbone of the indigenous population of central Nicaragua. Their descendants, the indigenous communities of Matagalpa, Sébaco, Jinotega and Muy Muy, continued to defend communal lands well into the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. At this point in the timeline (c. 1450), no ruler is recorded in this dataset; the territory was home to independent chiefdoms and communities — Chorotega, Nicarao, Subtiaba and Matagalpa peoples in the west and centre, and Chibchan-speaking peoples such as the Mayangna and Rama on the Caribbean side.

## Why it matters
The Matagalpa and other highland peoples shaped the history of central and northern Nicaragua and long resisted colonial control.

## Sources
- [Wikipedia — Cacaopera people](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cacaopera_people)
- [Wikipedia — Misumalpan languages](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misumalpan_languages)
- [Spanish Wikipedia — Idioma matagalpa](https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idioma_matagalpa)
- [Wikipedia — Pre-Columbian Peoples (period overview)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Nicaragua)