The Manobo and Higaonon tribes which include the Jovellar, Tepnage, Bayan, Legis, Taga-ang and Kulisan were the first dominant families in the area.

The Manobo and Higaonon used bags made from woven abaca fibers called camuyot to carry their belongings around.

In the year 1875, on orders from the Bishop of Cebu, a group of Spanish Jesuit Missionaries disembarked at the Port of Butuan.

Although they were not the first missionaries to arrive, as Augustinian Recollects had been here before them, their coming promised something different, for they intended to do more than maintain the parishes that the Roman Catholic Church have established.

They traversed the length and breadth of the Agusan Valley, its main river, and all its known tributaries, risking death from malarial mosquito, leeches and inhospitable tribal chieftains or datus.

It is to him and his fellow Jesuits that we owe the founding and early history of Las Nieves, which was about a day’s paddling upstream from Butuan.

In April 1877, Father Urios reported to his superior in Manila the successful founding of five villages along the Agusan River.

Las Nieves, the area that Father Urios first founded, was formerly named Pinana-an or a place for hunting as it was called by its early inhabitants.

Father Urios was reminded of his hometown in Jativa, Spain near Valencia, that they were overjoyed and shouted, “La nieve!

The snow!” With its vast agricultural land, alluvial plains stretching up to the mountains and its cool weather, Las Nieves most closely resembled the home region of Father Urios in Jativa.

He never failed to mention it in his numerous letter and reports to his superiors in Manila, that Las Nieves was never a source of sorrow or anxiety.

It was formally and officially separated from Esperanza on June 25, 1963 by virtue of Executive Order Number 42 issued by the president of the Philippines, His Excellency Diosdado Macapagal.