History of Honduras (to 1838) - Failure in The North

Failure in The North

While the Spanish had great success in the conquest and colonization of the Pacific parts of the country, they had much less success in the north. The northeastern region, known to the Spanish by a Nahuatl name Taguzgalpa, resisted repeated attempts at conquest successfully. Orders or grants for conquest were issued in 1545, 1562, 1567 and 1594, with no appreciable Spanish progress being reported. When these efforts failed, the Spanish attempted to "reduce" Taguzgalpa and neighboring Tologalpa (located in Nicaragua) through missionary efforts that began in 1604 and continued intermittently throughout the remainder of the Spanish period. In their efforts the missionaries sought to convert the inhabitants to Christianity and to persuade them to settle in missionary supervised new villages. While some reported conversions in the thousands, the total number resettled never amount to more than a few hundred.

On the eastern side of the north coast, the Spanish had more luck. The earliest settlers established coastal ports at Puerto de Caballos (today's Puerto Cortés), Trujillo and Gracias a Dios, as well as interior posts at San Pedro Sula and Naco. The latter experienced some growth during a brief gold rush in the 16th century, but in subsequent periods declined. There is some evidence that the Spanish presence was fairly strictly limited to just these towns and that a fairly thickly settled countryside was completely outside their control. However, in much of the 16th and 17th centuries, the Spanish on the Pacific side shipped good across the uncontrolled space to the ports for trans-shipment to Spain.

The failure of the Spanish to control the north coast left the region open to outsiders who were prepared to work with the local people against Spanish interests, and thus northern Europeans began trading and eventually settling in the northern areas during the various wars between England, the Netherlands and Spain of the period 1580 to 1625.