Ecuadorian people The great majority of Ecuadorians trace their origins to one or more of three geographical sources of human migrations: the pre-Hispanic indigenous populations who settled the region over 15,000 years ago, the Europeans (principally Spaniards) who arrived over five centuries ago, and ultimately the black sub-Saharan Africans whom they imported as slave labor during the same period. The mixing of two or more of these three groups established other mixed ethnic groups.