The Pearl Islands, a group of two…
1516 CE to 1527 CE
The Pearl Islands, a group of two hundred or more islands and islets (many tiny and uninhabited) lying about thirty miles (forty-eight kilometers) off the Pacific coast of Panama in the Gulf of Panama, are first occupied by Indians who are (with their leader Terarequí) wiped out within two years of the islands' discovery by the Spanish.
Vasco Nunez de Balboa had named the islands on his discovery of them in 1513 due to the many pearls which are found here.
Isla del Rey, the largest island, is easily larger than the other Pearl Islands combined, and is the second largest island in Panama, after Coiba.
Another Spaniard, Gaspar de Morales, reportedly exterminated twenty local Indian chiefs not long after and gave them to his dogs to tear to pieces.
Dites, another local chief, presented Morales with baskets of pearls, but this simply made the Spaniards want more and hastened the destruction of the native population.
The Spaniards, now needing workers to harvest pearls, import enslaved African laborers.
Their descendants today live on the islands, particularly del Rey.