Rising from the middle of Lake Cocibolca—also known as Lake Nicaragua—the largest lake in Central America, dumbbell-shaped Ometepe Island is formed by two volcanoes joined by a narrow isthmus. The twin peaks of Volcán Concepción and Volcán Maderas are often covered in thick clouds. But on a clear day, the view to the east from the top of either volcano takes in thick jungle that extends some 100 miles all the way to the Atlantic Ocean. To the west, a narrow strip of fertile plains separates Lake Cocibolca and the Pacific Ocean. South lies Costa Rica’s Nicoya Peninsula, divided from the rest of the country by the Gulf of Nicoya.
For thousands of years, this region, known as Greater Nicoya to modern scholars, served as a natural crossroads for cultures from as far away as central Mexico and South America. In the early sixteenth century, when Europeans first arrived in the area, the people living in Greater Nicoya spoke languages that belonged to three distinct families, including two that were closely related to Mesoamerican languages spoken to the north. In 1519, Spaniards Juan de Castañeda and Hernán Ponce de León led an expedition that put in at the Gulf of Nicoya and was met by a party of armed Chorotega warriors. The Spaniards noted that the Chorotega language was related to ones spoken in the south-central Mexican highlands, some 1,300 miles away.
Three years later, Spanish officer Gil González Dávila was dispatched as the head of an expedition from the newly founded colony of Panama to subdue the people of Nicaragua and Costa Rica. His force encountered the Indigenous Nicarao people, who
