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Pascual de Andagoya, who arrived in Darien in 1514 wrote the women are very well dressed, in embroidered cotton mantles which extend down so as to cover the feet, but the arms and bosom are uncovered". In "A Letter Giving A Description of the Isthmus of Darien", printed for John Mackie in Edinburgh 1699, there was written "...they use no other clothes than an apron tied to their middle coming down so as to hide their privates; such aprons are made of the rinds of trees, which they strongly beat upon stones till they are softened; the Same they use for Bed-Clothes except a few who make them of cotton. They are whiter than the whitest in Scotland."
The development of the mola originates from early body painting which was first transferred to cloth painting and then to sewing decorative belts on to sack-like dresses. The Kuna women of 1681 are described as using body paint much like the neighboring Choco Indians use today. Wafer wrote, "the women are the painters, and take great delight in it. The colors they like and use most are red, yellow and blue very bright and lovely. They temper them with some kind of oil, and keep them in calabashes for use, and ordinarily lay them on the surface of the 'skin with pencils of Wood, gnawed at the end to the softness of a brush; they make figures of birds, beasts, men, trees or the like up and down in every part of the body, more especially the faces; but the figures are not extraordinary like what they represent and are of Differing Dimensions as their Fancies lead them".The period 1725 to 1875 is a vacuum as far as this research on molas has revealed, but more information should be available through the perusal of exploration reports made during the heyday of surveys to investigate a canal route through the Darien Isthmus.