Atacames

Atacames lies on the Pacific coast of northern Ecuador, where forested hills meet the sea. Before the Spanish conquest it was a substantial Indigenous settlement and a centre of the Atacame people. The coast here was already occupied by numerous communities when the first Spanish expeditions sailed south from Panama.

In 1526 the pilot Bartolomé Ruiz reached the region during the expedition that explored the coast ahead of the conquest of Peru. Accounts of the voyage describe a large settlement at Atacames. In 1560 Juan de Olmos arrived from Portoviejo and established a Spanish settlement on the site of the Indigenous town. The change brought the coastal inhabitants into the expanding colonial world, although their earlier settlement had long preceded the arrival of the Spaniards.

The later city of Esmeraldas lies here.