ABSTRACT
Santa Maria la Antigua del Darien, the first permanent Spanish settlement, functioned as the seat of authority of the Crown in northwestern South America from 1510 until its abandonment in 1524. Despite its early importance and considerable size, there has been uncertainty about the precise site of Santa Maria la Antigua. It is one of the more extraordinary facts of history that the site of the first European settlement and administrative center on the American mainland lies on what is one of the continent's least known, most isolated, and inhospitable coasts. The descriptions of the chroniclers, especially Oviedo, Balboa, and Peter Martyr, suggest that it was located some miles inland on a small stream known as the Río Darien, which then entered directly into the Caribbean a few miles west of the Atrato delta. Thus Santa Maria controlled the entrance into the Atrato Valley as well as into the adjacent Panamanian highlands.
