La Ciudad Blanca (, Spanish for "The White City") is a legendary settlement said to be located in the Gracias a Dios Department in eastern Honduras. It is also known by the Pech name Kahã Kamasa ("White Town"). This extensive area of rainforest, which includes the Río Plátano Biosphere Reserve, has long been the subject of multidisciplinary research. Archaeologists refer to it as being a part of the Isthmo-Colombian Area of the Americas, one in which the predominant indigenous languages have included those in the Chibchan and Misumalpan families. Due to the many variants of the story in the region, most professional archaeologists doubt that it refers to any one actual settlement, much less one representing a city of the Pre-Columbian era. They point out that there are multiple large archaeological sites in the region and that references to the legendary White City cannot be proven to refer to any single place.
Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés reported hearing "trustworthy" information on a region with "towns and villages" of extreme wealth in Honduras, but never located them. In 1927, aviator Charles Lindbergh reported seeing a "white city" while flying over eastern Honduras.Colavito, Jason "On the Development of the Ciudad Blanca Myth" http://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/on-the-development-of-the-ciudad-blanca-myth The first known mention by an academic of the ruins under the name Ciudad Blanca (White City) was by Eduard Conzemius, an ethnographer from Luxembourg, in 1927. In his report on the Pech people of Honduras to the Society of Americanists, he said the ruins had been found about twenty-five years earlier by someone looking for rubber who got lost in the area between the Paulaya River and the Plátano River. He said it was called the White City because its buildings and a wall around it were white stone.Conzemius, Eduard (1927) "Los Indios Payas de Honduras, Estudio geografico, historico, etnografico y linguistico" in Journal de la Societé des Americanistes. Tome 19, p. 302 (See Timeline below for a list of the many attempts to identify the White City.)
Interest in Ciudad Blanca grew in the 1990s as numerous explorers searched for it and news of archeological work in the area was chronicled in popular media. In 2009, author Christopher Stewart attempted to retrace the steps of Theodore Morde in 1940 with the help of archaeologist Christopher Begley. His book about the search, Jungleland, was published in 2013. In May 2012, press releases issued by a team led by documentary film maker Steve Elkins and by the Honduran government about remote sensing exploration using LiDAR renewed interest in the legend. The lidar mapping revealed not one but two large settlements, one of which was the size of the core of Copán. Discovery of Ciudad Blanca was asserted by the media yet again after a 2015 expedition explored one of the settlements discovered in the 2012 lidar survey, which expedition archaeologists determined was in fact a Pre-Columbian city. This work has also been met with both acclaim and criticism.Joyce, Rosemary There's a Real Archaeological Surprise in Honduras…" http://blogs.berkeley.edu/2015/03/03/theres-a-real-archaeological-surprise-in-honduras/
Only 200 archeological sites have been discovered and documented in all of Mosquitia during the twentieth century, ranging from large complex settlements to artifact scatters and petroglyphs. The ancient inhabitants of Mosquitia are one of the least-known cultures in Central America, with the most extensive building period being 800-1250 AD. However, only a few have been systematically mapped and scientifically investigated so far and large parts of the region remain scientifically undocumented. The legend of Ciudad Blanca, a popular element of folklore in Honduras, has been the subject of multiple films, TV programs, books, articles, and in 2010 the Honduran government inaugurated an eco-tourism route to take advantage of its popularity called Ruta "Kao Kamasa" (Route plus the Pech name for the White City) between Santa Maria de Real (Escamilpa in the conquest period), Olancho and going through the Pech villages and the town of Dulce Nombre de Culmí either to the southern entrance of the Rio Platano Biosphere or to the Sierra de Agalta National Park or the proposed Malacate Mountain Wildlife Preserve in the municipio or county of Dulce Nombre de Culmí, Olancho Department.
Background Mosquitia is a historical and geo-cultural region along the western shore of the Caribbean Sea in Central America, traditionally described as extending from Cape Camarón to the River Chagres. The White City is said to be located in the Gracias a Dios department, reportedly in or near the Río Plátano Biosphere Reserve, a protected World Heritage Site stretching across the Gracias a Dios, Colon and Olancho Departments of Honduras in what archaeologists refer to as the Isthmo-Colombian Area. The ecology of this region is primarily a rainforest habitat, although parts are savannah and swamp. Mosquitia is occupied by several different indigenous peoples including the Pech, Miskito, Miskito Sambu, and Tawakha, Creoles, as well as mestizo populations and those of European and East or South Asian ancestry. These groups all speak their own languages, but Colonial-era reports also mention "Mexicano" (presumably Nahuatl) and variants of Lencan languages (Colo, Ulúa, Lenca) in the Taguzgalpa area east of Trujillo.Herranz, Atanasio (2000) Estado, sociedad y lenguaje La politica linguistica en Honduras, Tegucigalpa: Editorial Guaymuras
The Pech (at one time referred to as Paya) "trace their ancestry to Chilmeca in the Plátano River headwaters, near the legendary and lost 'Ciudad Blanca'."Stevens, Stanley (1997) Conservation Through Cultural Survival: Indigenous Peoples and Protected Areas. Island Press, Washington, DC. p. 106. In the past another group of indigenous peoples known to the Miskitos as the Rah, who were very warlike and ate people, also lived in the area.Wood, Scott (2103) La Moskitia desde adentro. Tegucigalpa: Secretaria de Cultura, Artes y Deportes. The Rio Platano Biosphere declared in the 1980s is a larger area that includes all the protected area decreed in 1961 by the Honduran Congress at the suggestion of the Maker of Honduras's 1954 General Map Dr. Jesús Aguilar Paz as the Ciudad Blanca Protected Area. The Honduran-Nicaraguan border dispute wasn't decided until 1960 in the World Court at The Hague. Aguilar Paz had included on his map a place called "Ciudad Blanca" with a question mark.(Aquilar Paz, Jesus (1954) Mapa General de la Republica de Honduras) The Pech name for the ruin is Kao Kamasa (White House in English, Casa Blanca in Spanish).Flores, Lazaro H. and Wendy Griffin (1991) Dioses, Heroes, y Hombres en el Universo Mitico Pech, San Salvador: Universidad Centroamericana José Simeon Cañas
Popular accounts of the Ciudad Blanca claim it was a city of great wealth, associated with the town or Province of Taguzgalpa east of Trujillo, that the Spanish on repeated occasions tried to conquer but could not.Conzemius, Eduard (1927) "Los Indios Payas de Honduras, Estudio geografico, historico, etnografico y linguistico" in Journal de la Societé des Americanistes, Tome 19, 1927, p. 245-302 Indigenous people such as the Pech, Tawahkas, and Miskitos talk about a city that cannot be entered, or if regular people enter they can not take anything out of it, and if they tell where it is, they will be punished. In some versions, it is the hiding place of deities who retreated from the Spanish invaders. Some accounts of Ciudad Blanca include allusions to the legend of El Dorado, an imaginary location in South America.Wood, Scott(2013) La Moskitia Desde Adentro: Aspectos Históricos, antropologicos, y culturales, Tegucigalpa: Secretaria de Cultura, Artes y DeportesConzemius, Eduard (1927) Los Indios Payas de Honduras, Estudio geografico, historico, etnografico y linguistico, in Journal de la Societe des Americanistes, Tome 19, 1927, p.302Griffin, Wendy (2013) "Jungleland" In Honduras, the Colonial era Spanish had a gold mine located between the Paulaya and Sico Rivers, an area named El Dorado in Colonial times.Conzemius, Eduard (1927) "Los Indios Payas de Honduras, Estudio geografico, historico, etnografico y linguistico" in Journal de la Societé des Americanistes, Tome 19, 1927, p.245-302
History The precise origin of the Ciudad Blanca legend is unclear. Spanish Conquistador Hernán Cortés is often cited as the earliest reference to the story, but he actually never mentioned a "white city" and his geographical references are vague. Begley suggests that elements of the legend probably originated with preexisting Pech and Tawahka stories and that those were conflated with Spanish fables from the time of the Spanish Conquest.
Spanish conquest
Around 1520, Cortés received what he considered to be "trustworthy reports of very extensive and rich provinces, and of powerful chiefs ruling over them". For example, Cortés made inquiries about a place called Hueitlapatlán (literally Old Land of Red Earth in Nahua), also known as Xucutaco (written Axucutaco in one copy of Cortés' letters) for six years. In 1526, he wrote to Spanish Emperor Charles V detailing what he had learned. "So wonderful are the reports about this particular province," he wrote, "that even allowing largely for exaggeration, it will exceed Mexico in riches, and equal it in the size of its towns and villages, the density of its population, and the culture of its inhabitants." According to Cortés, this place was located "between fifty and sixty leagues" (around 130–155 miles/210–250 km) from Trujillo. Although it is often assumed that Cortés and other conquistadors searched for it, there is no record of such attempts and it was never located. The Spanish of Trujillo strongly affected the Peoples of the Ciudad Blanca area through epidemics against which they had no defenses such as bubonic plague (peste) and smallpox (viruelas),MacLeod, Murdo (1973) Spanish Central America: A Socio-Economic History 1520-1720, Berkeley: University of California through capturing 150,000 people, which they sent from Trujillo to be slaves in the Caribbean Islands of Santo Domingo and Cuba where by 1545 all but 11 had died and later sent the last of their 300 encomienda to guard the Fort Santo Tomas Guatemala in 1645,Newson, Linda (1986) The Cost of Conquest: Indian Decline under Spanish Rule in Honduras. London: Westview PressLeyva, Hector (1991) Documentos Coloniales de Honduras Tegucigalpa: Centro de Publicaciones Obispado de Choluteca, Honduras and when they used forced labor for a short time in the 1530s to mine for gold in the Rio Paulaya and Rio Platano and at the site of Xeo (now Feo), Colón, before the Rah and Miskito and European pirates forced them to withdraw to Trujillo and from 1645 to 1797 all the way to Sonaguera, Colón.Leiva Vivas, Rafael (1982)Trafico de Esclavos Negros a Honduras. Tegucigalpa: Editorial GuaymurasGomez, Pastor (2012) Minería Aurifera, Esclavos negros, y las Relaciones Interetnicas de Siglo XVI. Tegucigalpa: IHAHWood Ronas, Scott (2013) La Moskitia Desde Adentro: Aspectos, Antropológicos y Culturales. Tegucigalpa: Secretaría de Cultura, Artes y Deportes
Nineteenth-century speculation