 Spanish colonizers arrived in the 16th century, largely wiping out or displacing existing indigenous populations.The district of Pedasí was created in 1840, when Panama was still tenuously united with Colombia (see the History of Panama for more background).At the time, it was a division of the County of Los Santos (today the province of Los Santos), in the Province of Panama (which covered all of present-day Panama, except for the provinces of Veraguas and Bocas del Toro).