We investigate existence and uniqueness of weak solutions of the Cauchy problem for the porous medium equation on negatively curved Riemannian manifolds. We show existence of solutions taking as initial condition a finite Radon measure, not necessarily positive. We then establish uniqueness in the class of nonnegative solutions, under a quadratic lower bound on the Ricci curvature. On the other hand, we prove that any weak solution of the porous medium equation necessarily takes on as initial datum a finite Radon measure. In addition, we obtain some results in potential analysis on manifolds, concerning the validity of a modified version of the mean-value inequality for superharmonic functions, and properties of potentials of positive Radon measures. Such results are new and of independent interest, and are crucial for our approach.