In 1511, Balboa records having met a tribe of Carib Indians on the islands. He lived with them was given a girl of some station as a wife. At some point Balboa's behavior apparently so offended the Indians that they rebelled against him and his exploration force, and thereafter warred continuously with the Spaniards. For almost two hundred years, they were driven from the islands and hid out in the most remote part of the isthmus, the Darien jungle.



Spain dominated the isthmus for a long time. It is estimated that there were about 200,000 of the Indians when they decided to resist the Spanish conquerors. The Spanish came seeking undeveloped natural resources and unexploited cheap labor -- to the conquistadores, that meant gold and converts. They found neither among what were during the 17th and 18th centuries called the Darien Indians.



In reports as recent as the early 20th century, the Darien jungle is believed to be populated by cannibals and head-hunters. It may be true.



By mid 18th century, the islands were a remote and forgetten part of what was uncontestedly Spanish colonial domain. The Indians returned to the islands One group remained in the mountains, and became called the Jungle Cuna tribe. One group became the River Cuna, a third moved south and became the Colombian Cuna. The rest returned to the sea and became the San Blas Cuna. There are now about 25,000 San Blas Cuna, and the other three tribes together make up about three thousand more.



Then, and after the Spanish colonial hold was broken in the 1820's, the Cuna lived in relative isolation. They were a completely closed society. Until very recently it was forbidden for any outsider to spend the night on any of the islands. Women were not permitted off the islands, and contact with outsiders was limited to trade boats.



No matter who was in political control of the isthmus, the islands have always been popular with free trade boats and pirates. Both found the protected archipelago a good place to replenish their food and water stores from the fresh streams along the coast.

One of the earliest accounts of the Darien Indians was published in 1699 by Lionel Wafer, an English surgeon who became a pirate. He had been wounded in a battle and was cast ashore on the islands in 1680. He lived there a few years and was rescued, and eventually lived to publish his book back in England.

There are also records from the 19th century of Cuna men signing on as crew on whaling vessels and Yankee traders.



In 1925, the Cuna fought a brief skirmish with Panamanian police forces, and declared themselves an independent state. In 1938 their reservation was established. The land, which belongs to the Cuna, includes a narrow strip along the coast, and all of the offshore islands in the archipelago. La Comarca de San Blas is autonomous, but overseen by a Panamanian entendiente or governor, who pays small salaries to the island chiefs, and who represents the Panamanian government.



The church and the state have always continued to make themselves felt in the islands. There have always been missionaries, and their efforts have sometimes been effective. This building, which was at the time this was taken the largest on the islands, is the Catholic Church on the island of Ustupo

Some Cuna have become Catholic or Christian, but for the most part they prefer their own spiritual views to the prevailing imports. They are delighted to accept the stories and rituals of the Bible right along with our tales of our trip to the moon -- as improbable but enjoyable myths, good spirit magic, and great grist for the imaginative minds of the mola-makers, as we shall soon see.



The ships continued to come. When the Panama Canal was dug, many of the Cuna men came to the new towns of Panama City and Colon to work. They continued to come to the Canal Zone to work through the First and Second World Wars. In the years since, they have been discovered by anthropologists, and social service organizations, and the entrepreneurs, and recently..



the art museums and galleries. This display, part of a major touring exhibit from the Maxwell Museum, was shown at New Mexico State University, which is becoming a focal point for Mola collectors in the southwestern United States.



The show included such exceptional Mola art as these pieces.



The gentleman on the right is the island chief. His guest in the center is Niko Panszczyk, here shown on his first visit to the San Blas islands in the late 1960's. Since then he has become one of the leading mola collectors in Central America, and for a time raised one of that other gentleman's sons on his own ranch in Costa Rica.

As you can see here, the Cuna are among the smallest people in the world. Most of them are only slightly larger than pygmies.



And so the Cuna find themselves eye to eye with the so-called civilized world in the middle of the 20th century. No doubt they find us only a little less strange than creatures from another world, with our huge ships and things that fly, and endless printed pictures of the most unimaginable things.



And how strange it must seem to them that such marvelous beings should be most interested in their used clothing. The Cuna were amused, delighted, that people would pay them for their old molas.

---

CONTINUE