Columbus landed on Bocas del Toro in 1502. The original inhabitants of Bocas were the Guaymies , Bokota and Teribe. The region was forgotten while the time passed until the colonial times. During the 18 and 19 century, is was populated by Afro - Caribbean immigrants from Jamaica, San Andres and Providencia, who founded the Bocas del Toro as we know it today. Also the English settled in Bocas del Toro ( Boca Drago ), while the region was still of no importance to the government of Panama.
Bocas del Toro has gone through different commercial development stages. First it became important for the hunt of Carey Turtles, then the trading of Cocoa, Mahogany and other goods. In the 19 century, the United Fruit Company started developing the region..
Nowadays, the Islands of Bocas del Toro are of great natural and cultural interest. A beautiful blend of people are to be found, from Afro Caribbean inhabitants, to indigenous people including the Ngobe, Teribe, Guaymie and Teribe tribes and white hispanic people from mainland Panama.A Little History - When Christopher Columbus entered the Bay of Caraboro (the name given by the Indians to the Bay of Almirante) with his two ships in the course of his final voyage to the New World, in 1502, the area which now houses present-day Bocas del Toro was inhabited by the indigenous tribes of Guaymi, Teribe and Bokota.
In 1510 the Spanish founded on the Caribbean coastline the settlement of Nombre di Dios (on the delta of the Changres River), into which would subsequently flow the great riches that the Conquistadors brought back from their forays into Peru, which they reached by departing from the port of Panama City on the Pacific coast. The transportation of precious merchandise attracted the attention of pirates, and in the eighteenth century the Caribbean coast was considered so fraught with danger that the Spanish began to bypass Panama, travelling to Europe directly from Peru by circumnavigating Cape Horn. Documents show that in 1745 British citizens were farming the land at Boca del Drago. The English presence was a determining factor in the history of the archipelago. The nineteenth century saw the first major migratory wave, with thousands of black people from the Antilles and from the Colombian islands of San Andrés and Providence transported as slave labour by rich landowners. The black people began to intermix with the indigenous populations, creating small communities of fishermen and farmers. It was these new inhabitants that founded, in 1826, the present-day town of Bocas del Toro, which for a number of years served as an encampment providing lodging for foreign merchants.
This was the era which gave rise to trading between the British and the diverse peoples of Central America, among them the inhabitants of Bocas del Toro, who received from the Europeans various kinds of merchandise in exchange for carey (marine tortoiseshell), marine turtles, cocoa, timber and sarsaparilla (the medicinal plant smilax aspera).
The closing years of the nineteenth century saw growth in an area of activity that would prove a determining factor on the social and economic development of the region: the cultivation and export of bananas, thanks to the Snyder Banana Co., founded in 1890, and the United Fruit Co. ( modern day Chiquita Brands) of 1899. Vast tracts of the area were also turned over to the cultivation of sugar cane, cocoa, and coconut palms, while the trade in tortoiseshell and live turtles continued. The Surgeon Brothers constructed ports to enable traffic of goods and of passengers to Colón and other locations in the Caribbean.
The historical and political affairs of 20th century Panama already reflected the present day character of this strip of land, with its eclectic culture that bears the mark of a medley of ethnic influences: the Indian communities, the black peoples originating in the Antilles, the Chinese and Middle Eastern immigrants, the Europeans and North Americans, who all contributed, and continue to do so, to the lively and special atmosphere of this land.
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