Pre-Columbian History of Costa Rica - Mesoamerican Area

Mesoamerican Area

In the opening decades of the 16th century, most of the people inhabiting the Nicoya Peninsula and the vicinity of its eponymous gulf belonged to the Mesoamerican cultural area. Their presence has also been attested in the central Pacific region between the Jesús María and Tárcoles Rivers. These people spoke Chorotega, and this is why sometimes they are generically designated as such. Furthermore, in the vicinity of modern-day Bagaces, at the mouth of the San Juan River and the Sixaola River basin there were enclaves of groups with Mexican cultural roots who spoke Náhuatl. According to several documents from the second half of the 16th century, the Nahua colony in Sixaola had been founded by tributary groups sent by the Aztec emperor Moctezuma II, who were driven there during the Spanish conquest of Tenochtitlán and decided to stay there.

The Nicoya Peninsula and gulf region were the first Costa Rican territories to definitively and lastingly submit to the dominion of the Crown of Castile, around 1520. The interest in these areas was strengthened by the erroneous assumption that it would allow communication between the gulf and Lake Nicaragua, and beginning in 1522 there was constant Castilian presence in the region.

Much of the knowledge we know regarding the life of this region's inhabitants is derived from the chronicles of Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés, who visited the Nicoyan people in 1529. It is possible that many of their institutions and customs were similar to those of the Chorotegan indigenous communities that at the time inhabited the Nicaraguan side of the Pacific. Details of the latter, among those regions administered by friar Francisco de Bobadilla, were more numerously recorded by Fernández de Oviedo and other conquistadors as well as a few priests.

The population of Nicoya was a political, religious and economic center, located a short distance from the modern-day city of this name. (In the middle of the 16th century, there were two other dependencies also known as Nicoya, one larger than the other.) In Nicoya would reside a high chief, who held that post for life and exercised political authority, and would carry out religious and ceremonial functions. It appears that there was prevalently a dynasty-elective system for chief succession. Fernández de Oviedo indicated that this priest had other principal vassals and horseman called galpones, who would accompany him and protect him, and be his court subjects and captains. It is possible that these elders, whom the chronicler describes as arrogant and cruel, represented the various tributary villages of Nicoya.

Fray Juan de Torquemada wrote that the Chorotegan villages in the Gulf of Nicoya area organized themselves into four "provinces": two within the peninsula, Nicoya and Cantrén (Canjel); and two others on the west coast, Orotiña y Chorotega. Other sources mention Canjén, Diriá, Nacaome, Namiapí, Nicopasaya, Papagayo, Paro and Zapandí, as well as the island of Pococi (today known as Isla Caballo).