Lempira, Lord of the Mountain

Lempira, also written Elempira in the 1558 service record of the soldier Rodrigo Ruiz, was a Lenca war leader of the Cerquín highlands of southwestern Honduras. The chronicler Antonio de Herrera relates that in 1537, at the charge of the paramount lord Entepica, he united some two hundred towns, including the Cares with whom his own people had been at war, and held the fortified Peñol de Cerquín against the Spaniards for about six months while the revolt spread through much of the province of Honduras-Higueras. Two traditions of his death survive: in Herrera's account he was treacherously shot with an arquebus during a feigned parley, whereas the probanza de méritos of Rodrigo Ruiz (Archivo General de Indias, Patronato 69, ramo 5), rediscovered and published by Mario Felipe Martínez Castillo, claims that Ruiz killed him in hand-to-hand combat and carried off his head. His name, traditionally interpreted as 'Lord of the Mountain', was given in 1926 to the national currency of Honduras and later to a department of the republic, and 20 July is kept as the Day of Lempira; among the modern Lenca he remains the emblematic ancestor-hero of indigenous resistance.

Domains

• war
• sovereignty

Powers

• to unite rival highland chiefdoms into a single war confederation
• to hold a fortified mountain refuge against prolonged siege

Relations

• subordinate to: Entepica, Lord of Cerquín

Sources

• Antonio de Herrera y Tordesillas, Historia general de los hechos de los castellanos en las islas y tierra firme del mar océano, Década VI (Madrid, 1601–1615)
• Mario Felipe Martínez Castillo, Los últimos días de Lempira y otros documentos (Tegucigalpa: Editorial Universitaria, 1987)
• Linda A. Newson, The Cost of Conquest: Indian Decline in Honduras under Spanish Rule (Boulder: Westview Press, Dellplain Latin American Studies 20, 1986)
• Anne Chapman, Los lencas de Honduras en el siglo XVI (Tegucigalpa: Instituto Hondureño de Antropología e Historia, 1978)