John Gret
John Gret was the English name given to a Guna man of the Darién region of present-day Panama. William Dampier's account describes his role in establishing relations between English buccaneers and Indigenous communities during the late seventeenth century.[1]
Intermediary in Darién
In Luis Carlos Arenas's study of Guna history, which draws on Dampier, Captain Wright took Gret from a canoe and brought him aboard his ship while he was young. Gret subsequently lived among the Miskito people and married a Miskito woman.[1]
When Wright later captured another Guna child, Gret offered to negotiate with the child's community. The boy was returned to his father, a local leader. This helped establish an agreement allowing English seafarers to cross Indigenous territory towards the Pacific side of the Isthmus of Panama. A recognition signal was arranged for travellers.[1]
Dampier's account of his death
Dampier also reported that Gret and several companions later visited an English trading vessel from Jamaica. Its crew tried to enslave them and killed them when they attempted to escape. William Clark Russell retells this passage in his biography of Dampier.[2]
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Arenas, Luis Carlos (2024). ¡Vivir en libertad! Historia documentada del pueblo Guna, 1501–1728, chapter 9, pp. 527–529. ISBN 979-8-218-44328-3. In Spanish.
- ↑ Russell, William Clark (1894). William Dampier. London: Macmillan, chapter II, pp. 33–34. Digitised by Project Gutenberg.