Naso

The Naso, known in Spanish colonial records as Teribe or Térraba, are a Chibchan people of the jungle mountains between Bocas del Toro in western Panama and the Costa Rican border. They first met Europeans when Columbus anchored in Almirante Bay on his fourth voyage in 1502.

In 1564 Juan Vázquez de Coronado fought his way to Corcuru. The Naso kept rising against Spanish rule: they killed settlers in 1604, revolted again in 1610 and burned a Franciscan church in 1618.

From 1695 friars transplanted communities to the Pacific side; those who refused the removal of 1702 stayed north as the nucleus of the Naso in Panama. Miskito raiders harried the region through the eighteenth century, driving the Naso into the mountains, where only four sub-groups survived by the century's end.