Atacame

The Atacame were a coastal people of the rainy Pacific lowlands of Esmeraldas Province in Ecuador, whose chief settlement of Atacames, on the river of the same name, was the largest town of the shore when Bartolomé Ruiz reconnoitred it in 1526.

They shared their culture and isolated Atacame tongue, also called Esmeraldeño, with neighbouring Esmeraldas groups. Unlike the highland peoples they were never subdued by the Incas and met the Spaniards as independent villagers. Francisco Pizarro passed along their coast in 1531, and in 1560 Juan de Olmos founded the Spanish town of Atacames there; a first chapel followed in 1577, and an epidemic of 1589 emptied many villages.

Colonial rule brought sharp depopulation: by 1740 the town held only about twenty-four families, while the Atacame language steadily gave way to Spanish.