Panama City, Panama's Pacific Islands & Colón

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History

The isthmus of Panamá has been a world crossroads since early 16th-century Spanish conquistadors first began hauling looted treasures across its narrow wasp waist. Since then, Panamá’s history has been written with more treachery, intrigue, plots and sub-plots than the most ambitious novel. Signs of that history are still visible - in massive stone forts, sunken galleons, ancient cathedrals and, the most famous of all landmarks, the Panama Canal. But history didn’t begin with the conquistadors; it began thousands of years before when indigenous people first settled here. They too, left bits and pieces of their histories and descendants that live on today.

Pre-Columbian Times

Traces of Panamá’s human habitation date back 11,000 years. Little remains of these earliest cultures, although archaeological evidence - stone tools, fish bones and shellfish refuse - suggests they lived near the streams, mangrove swamps and estuaries that provided their food sources. Indigenous populations increased dramatically after ceramics first appeared (5000 to 3000 BC) in the Monagrillo region of the Azuero Peninsula - at about the same time crop cultivation began. By 1000 BC, fishing was taking place in the coastal areas, and slash-and-burn agriculture had deforested part of the peninsula’s Pacific coastal plain. As populations continued to increase, people began moving inland to higher elevations. More complex pottery and burial practices indicated a growing sophistication and, by 500 BC, three major cultural zones had emerged - Western, Central and Eastern - which were identified by their uniquely different styles and designs of ceramics and other artifacts. These groups lasted until the Conquest.

The Western Region

Indigenous peoples from central Costa Rica migrated to the mountains of western Panamá between the fourth and fifth centuries AD. They developed agricultural communities that spread from Barilles, a ceremonial center near Volcán Barú, across what are now Bocas del Toro and Chiriquí provinces to the coasts of both oceans. This group produced a monocolor pottery called Bugaba, incising it with motifs similar to those carved into the enigmatic Barilles petrogylphs (carved boulders). Massive stone statues found at the Barilles site portray men astride the shoulders of larger, subjected individuals, suggestive of a warrior cult. The dominant figure usually wears a conical-shaped hat and clutches a severed head or two. Unearthed ceremonial metataes (low, four-legged stone tables on which corn was ground) often have borders of tiny carved heads with baby-like features. Anthropologists believe this portrays dominance or, as some suggest, a baby sacrifice cult. Barilles came to an end during the fifth century AD when Barú volcano erupted, burying it beneath layers of lava and ash. After an uncertain period of time, the region was again occupied. This time by two separate cultures known as Classic Chiriquí and San Lorenzo. Almost nothing is known about them.

The Central Region

Panamá’s richest archaeological region encompasses part of present-day Panamá Province, all of Coclé, Herrera, and Los Santos to Veraguas. Pottery found here dates from 3000 BC, with a cultural continuity extending from about 900 BC - when painting was first introduced - until the Conquest. By the sixth century AD, native peoples had organized into complex class-ranked societies headed by powerful chiefs. Their economies were based on intensive agriculture, with commerce and trade extending far beyond the isthmus. Superstition and witchcraft played an important part in the lives of these warrior civilizations that fought continually for control of the best lands. During the Classic Period (AD 500-1500), pottery became increasingly more elaborate and ritualistic, characterized by elaborate shamanistic and zoomorphic designs, and beautifully painted bowls with pedestals or tripod legs.

By the fourth century AD, gold had become important as both a symbol of status and a commodity. Chiefs and ranking warriors were buried with human and animal effigies, beads and pendants, hammered and carved helmets and breastplates of solid gold. Geometrically aligned stone columns demarcate the El Caño ceremonial center, an indication the region was ruled as a chiefdom. Cerro Juan Diaz, at the top of a hill now surrounded by cow pastures and cornfields, was inhabited from about 300 BC until the Conquest.

The Eastern Region

Although little archaeological study had been carried out in the Eastern Region - from Panamá Province south to bordering Columbia’s Gulf of Urabá - early Spanish explorers described class societies headed by powerful chiefs (caciques) who lived in wooden houses much larger and more elaborate than those of their subjects. One early Spanish account describes a long room in a cacique’s house that contained dozens of dried, smoked bodies hanging from the rafters. The Spanish assumed they were the cacique’s royal ancestors, judging by the gold masks covering the faces and the heaps of dusty accumulated treasure surrounding the bodies. Only two pottery types have been identified in the region. The earliest type (AD 1500), called Choppy Chocolate, is unpainted and decorated with animal forms in bas-relief. A later style found near the Bayano River is painted, more intricate and estimated to have been produced between AD 685 and 900.

Pre-Columbian Gold

The iconography of Panamá’s oldest gold objects suggests the art of metallurgy arrived here from northern Colombia during the first century AD. Before AD 400, shell pendants, beautifully carved to represent animal and zoomorphic forms, had been worn to indicate status, and may have had religious significance. When the art of metallurgy spread northward, the shell pendants were replaced with intricately designed effigy pendants of gold. The effigies became the most important status symbols, and were also commercial commodities traded far beyond Panamá’s borders. Gold objects from Panamá have been found at the bottom of the sacred Maya well at Chichen Itzá in Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula. Spanish conquistadors enslaved the defeated indigenous peoples to carry their burdens and work the gold mines. The gold-hungry Spaniards desecrated burial sites, stripping even the dead of their status. Caravels bound for Spain groaned under the weight of Panamá’s gold.

GOLD HUACAS: The wordhuacais derived from the Spanish,huacal, referring to a burial. The word evolved to mean the items interred in pre-Columbian gravesites, sohuacas might be jewelry, pottery, weapons or tools. Panamá’s goldhuacaswere fashioned into pendants, earrings, nose rings, breastplates, cuffs and bracelets. The beautifully detailed pendants represented gods, animals, fantastic zoomorphic creatures and humans.

The Conquest

Rodrigo de Bastidas was the first European to visit Panamá. He sailed from Spain in May of 1500, taking with him a young seaman named Vasco Nuñez de Balboa, along with Juan de la Cosa, who had previously been with Columbus on his first three voyages and was somewhat familiar with the region. After making landfall on the Caribbean coast of present-day Venezuela, they sailed north, up the South American coast and, in the fall of 1501, entered the Bay of Darién, a yawning chasm of water cut deep into the jungls between Panamá and Colombia. After exploring the bay (thinking it might be a route to the Orient), Bastidas continued north, passing through the San Blas Islands and up the isthmus to Nombre de Dios - and possibly as far as Portobelo, trading (or more likely plundering) for gold and capturing slaves along the way. They left the isthmus in worm-eaten leaking ships, hoping to make Santo Domingo on the island of Hispañola. Forced off course by storms, they landed on the coast of Haiti, where both ships sank before they could be unloaded. Most of the treasure was salvaged, but all of the slaves, who were left chained in the hold, drowned. Bastidas was arrested and sent to Spain in chains, charged with trading without a license.

TRADING WITHOUT A LICENSE?

Bastidas sailed to the New World under a charter imposed by the Spanish Crown. The charter permitted him to discover new lands not previously seen by Columbus or any other explorer that followed him, or those already belonging to Portugal. According to the still-preserved charter, Bastidas would surrender to the king 25% of any treasure he might find. This included gold, silver, copper and any other metal; pearls, precious stones and jewels; slaves and half-breeds; monsters; serpents; fishes and birds; spices and drugs, and all else of any value or quality.

Christopher Columbus was 51 years old and in poor health when he left Spain on May 9, 1502. It would be his fourth - and final - voyage to the New World. Perhaps he knew it would be his last chance to find a westward sea passage to the Far East - one he believed must lie somewhere between South America and Cuba (then thought to be a continent) and the riches that had so far eluded him. He must have still held a spark of optimism, as he took Arabic interpreters to help him communicate with the Orient’s rulers; his brother, Bartolome; and his 13-year-old son, Fernando, who would later chronicle his father’s life and disappointments.

In late July, Columbus and his crew captured a Maya trading boat in the Bay of Honduras. Fernando described it as an elaborately carved dug-out canoe, the length of a galley and eight feet wide, with an enclosed cabin. The Mayas had no gold, but did have trade goods of such fine quality that Columbus believed they had come from the Orient. Columbus’ baffled interpreters could make no sense of the Maya language. But the wily Mayas, with persistence and sign language, managed to convey to the Spaniards that they didn’t know of any sea route and that there was no gold in the land to the north, but that there were vast quantities of it to the south.

Columbus sailed south to a region he named Veragua (in Spanish, ver is to see, and agua means water, hence see water), just north of the present site of the Panama Canal. There he found Indians wearing breastplates and bracelets of solid gold. The Indians gladly traded gold for his trinkets, but it wasn’t enough for Columbus, who was still determined to find a sea route to the Far East. Over the protests of his crew, he left Veragua and continued south along the Caribbean coast to Nombre de Dios and Portobelo. To his disappointment, the Indians there had nothing but cotton and food to trade. After learning Bastidas had been there the previous year, and with his crew now close to mutiny, Columbus turned back toward Veragua. Dangerously ill and often incoherent, stranded by storms and attacked by hostile Indians, he sank into despair. He had failed to find a sea passage, failed to find the source of the gold, and failed to found a colony. With two of his ships already lost, he sailed the remaining two to Jamaica, where they sunk as well. Marooned there for a year, he finally returned to Spain in 1504, only to discover his benefactress, Queen Isabella, had died. Broken and disgraced, he died two years later.

Meanwhile, after his expedition with Bastidas, Balboa remained in Hispaniola and ran himself into debt. To escape his creditors, he returned to the isthmus of Panamá, stowed away in a barrel on a ship commanded by Martín Fernández de Enciso. Enciso’s ship landed on the coast and established a settlement called Santa Maria de la Antigua del Darién. After plundering the local Indians, Enciso sailed back to Spain, and Balboa became the unofficial leader of the conquistadors. During an expedition to look for survivors of a settlement at Nombre de Dios, Balboa discovered two Spaniards who were naked and painted like the Indians. Criminals who had deserted to escape punishment for their crimes, the two had been taken in by Indians led by a chief named Careta. During the year they lived with the Indians, the deserters had learned their language and knew that Careta kept a store of gold. Balboa’s men raided the village, took the gold, and captured the cacique and his family. After a series of discussions, however, Balboa began to respect Careta and agreed to release him. Careta forgave Balboa and offered his daughter in thanks for his freedom. Balboa accepted, and the beautiful young girl, Anayansi, became Balboa’s mistress and remained so for the rest of his life.

The next cacique Balboa befriended was Comagre, who offered him gifts and gold. One of Comagre’s sons told Balboa of a vast sea across the Darién wilderness and of the people there, who had ships as big as Balboa’s and cooking pots made of gold. And so Balboa set out to cross the Darién with 190 Spanish volunteers (among them the illiterate Francisco Pizarro), along with Comagre and a force of warriors. For six weeks they struggled through steaming jungles, swamps and over treacherous mountains, battling hostile tribes as they went. Instead of killing the defeated Indians, Balboa befriended them and, by trading trinkets and hatchets for gold and pearls, swelled his ranks with warriors and his coffers with treasure. On September 26, 1513, Vasco Nuñez de Balboa waded into the Pacific and claimed the Southern Sea for the Spanish Crown.

After his victorious return to Santa Maria, Balboa dispatched the Spanish Crown’s share of treasure and news of his discovery to King Ferdinand. But Ferdinand had already sent Pedro Arias de Avila, commonly called Pedrarias, to govern Veragua, as the entire region was then known. Pedrarias landed at Santa Maria in July 1514 with 2,000 conquistadors and settlers and promptly arrested Balboa. In their lust for gold, Pedrarias’ men tortured and murdered Balboa’s Indian friends while a stunned Balboa could do nothing to stop them. Fortunately for Balboa, King Ferdinand soon received his dispatch and appointed him Governor of the Southern Sea, as the Pacific was then called. Pedrarias had no choice but to release him. Balboa left Santa Maria and sailed up the Darién coast where he founded Acla, the first town in what is now Panamá. Pedrarias was furious. Here he was stuck governing the region while Balboa was free to go off searching for the South Sea gold and pearls.

Balboa

Word of the South Sea riches spread, fueling Pedrarias’ greed and jealousy toward Balboa. Even as Balboa was planning an expedition to discover the source of the riches, Pedrarias’ wife, in cahoots with the Bishop of Panamá, was hatching a scheme to convince her husband to marry one of their daughters to Balboa. Perhaps she thought it would bring an end to the animosity between the two, or perhaps her motives were less altruistic. No records exist to tell us why Pedrarias agreed to the plan. Perhaps he thought the union would give him more control over Balboa and would serve to keep any lands, gold and treasure Balboa might discover within the family. Why Balboa consented to the marriage is even more of a mystery. He had never met the girl, who was still in Spain, and he had his beloved mistress, Anayansi. For reasons that history has obscured, Balboa and one of his lieutenants, Francisco Garabito, had a falling out over Anayansi. The matter seemed to be resolved, and Balboa forgave Garabito. However, Garabito did not forgive Balboa and reported to Pedrarias that Balboa had no intention of marrying his daughter and planned to leave his jurisdiction. It may or may not have been true that Balboa would not have married the girl, but an angry Pedrarias had him arrested again - this time by none other than scheming Francisco Pizarro. Pedrarias charged Balboa with treason, forced a speedy trial and condemned him to death. In January of 1519, an innocent Balboa was executed in Acla. He was 44 years old. Nothing is known of what became of Anayansi.

Santa Maria was abandoned and the settlers moved across the isthmus to a native fishing village called Panamá on the Pacific coast. On August 15, 1519, Pedrarias officially founded the city of Nuestra Señora de la Asunción de Panamá, which he ruled until his death in 1530. During that brief time, Pedrarias the Cruel caused the death or enslavement of two million indigenous people.

EL CAMINO REAL

The site for the new city of Panamá was chosen for its location on the South Sea coast, and because of an Indian trail that led from it across the isthmus to the Caribbean. The Spanish paved the trail with cobblestones - using slave labor, of course - and it became the highway used for transporting the Americas’ plundered wealth from Panamá to Nombre de Dios, and later to Portobelo, where it was loaded onto ships bound for Spain. It came to be called El Camino Real, The Royal Road. By 1600, Spanish records show that 200,000 tons of silver had crossed El Camino Real. No estimates exist for the gold and jewels.

In an ironic twist of fate, it was the savage Pizarro who claimed Peru’s riches for Spain. After ravaging Darién, Pizarro sailed to Peru aboard the ships Balboa had built for his own expedition. As treasure plundered from Veragua and Peru left the isthmus, goods arrived from Europe en route to the newly established Spanish Viceroyalty in Peru. Nombre de Dios and the new city of Panamá swelled with wealth. By 1542, the isthmus had become the world’s crossroads. In the end, the scheming Pizarro earned his just reward when stabbed to death by hired assassins.

CAMINO LAS CRUCES: Las Cruces(The Crosses)Trail began at the Caribbean mouth of the Chagres River. Goods arriving from Spain were transported up the river to the little town of Cruces and, from there, were taken overland by mule to Panamá.

Colonization

Colonization began in earnest when the conquistadors advanced west into territories governed by hostile Indians led by powerful caciques. After the defeat of cacique Natá, warrior ruler of what is now Coclé Province, the town of Natá de los Caballeros was founded in 1516 on the remains of his village. Natá was the first New World town founded away from the coast. Although as many as 20,000 conquistadors at one time engaged the Indians in battle, it still took four decades to defeat the warriors led by caciques Urraca and Estibir. By the mid-1550s, the few surviving Indians that had escaped capture and slavery retreated to the Central Mountains where their descendants live to this day. The Spanish continued their advance west even as gangs of escaped African slaves raided treasure caravans along the Camino Real and pirates plundered coastal settlements and treasure ships. The Veragua gold mines were later abandoned and the interior ignored until after the Portobelo Fairs ended in 1731.

THE PORTOBELO FAIRS: The fairs began in 1544, when merchant ships came to Portobelo from Colombia and Spain with goods to trade for gold and silver. Soon, merchants and trade goods began arriving from Europe, the Orient, and from as far away as the Philippines to attend the fairs that were held at least once each year. Portobelo became the world’s most important commercial center. The fairs lasted almost two centuries, until 1731.

The Players

The Spanish and the local indigenous people were the chief players in the drama of Panamá’s early days. The cast soon grew to include African slaves, pirates and buccaneers from every nation. In the early 16th century, the Spanish reported as many as 60 different indigenous groups in western Panamá alone. However, no complete records were kept and no one knows for sure how many there actually were. Pedrarias’ orders to enslave or exterminate them, European diseases and the priesthood’s convert or die policies eventually wiped out most of the native population.

The Cimmarones

Thousands of African slaves were brought to the isthmus - most by English slave traders - to replace indigenous Indians who died under their staggering burdens or chose suicide over slavery. It was estimated that 300 of every 1,000 Africans brought here escaped into the jungles. They developed communities deep in the Darién, and were called Cimmarones, an early Spanish term for wild men. Intent on murdering the hated Spanish, the Cimmarones organized gangs and raided treasure caravans along the Camino Real. And, like many indigenous people, they later joined forces with plundering English pirates. A few Cimmaron communities still exist in Darién. Today, they’re known as Dariénites.

Corsairs & Pirates

English and French trader-pirates, called corsairs, swept in to relieve the Spanish of their treasure. Francis Drake