The Guayupe are an Arawak-speakingDescription Guayupe
/ref> indigenous group of people in modern-day

Colombia Colombia (, ; ), officially the Republic of Colombia, is a country in South America with insular regions in North America—near Nicaragua's Caribbean coast—as well as in the Pacific Ocean. The Colombian mainland is bordered by the Car ...

. They inhabit the westernmost parts of the

department Department may refer to: * Departmentalization, division of a larger organization into parts with specific responsibility Government and military *Department (administrative division), a geographical and administrative division within a country, ...

Meta Meta (from the Greek μετά, '' meta'', meaning "after" or "beyond") is a prefix meaning "more comprehensive" or "transcending". In modern nomenclature, ''meta''- can also serve as a prefix meaning self-referential, as a field of study or ende ...

. At the time of the Spanish conquest, more than 250,000 Guayupe were living in large parts of Meta. The territories of the Guayupe stretched from the neighbouring Guahibo terrains to the east and north and the Muisca territories to the west over an area of . Knowledge of the Guayupe has been provided by

Pedro de Aguado Friar Pedro de Aguado (1513 or 1538 – late 16th or early 17th century) was a Spanish Franciscan friar who spent around 15 years in the New Kingdom of Granada, preaching to the indigenous people. During this time he collected source material ...

and others.

Guayupe territory

The territory of the Guayupe before the Spanish conquest stretched from the rivers Upía and

Guayabero Guayabero is a Guahiban language that is spoken by a thousand people in Colombia. Many of its speakers are monoglots, with few fluent Spanish Spanish might refer to: * Items from or related to Spain: **Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group i ...

to the peaks of the Eastern Ranges of the Colombian Andes. Their area covered around .Description of the Guayupe
/ref> The Guayupe lived mostly around the

Ariari River The Ariari River is a river of Colombia, located entirely within the Meta Department. Part of the Orinoco River basin, it merges with the Guayabero River to forms the Guaviare River, one of the principle tributaries of the Orinoco. See also *List ...

Municipalities belonging to Guayupe territories

Description

The first report on the Guayupe nation is from German conquistador

Philipp von Hutten Philipp von Hutten (18 December 1505 – 17 May 1546) was a German adventurer and an early European explorer and conquistador of Venezuela. He is a significant figure in the history of Klein-Venedig (1528 - 1546), the concession of Venezuela Prov ...

, participant of the expedition led by Georg Hohermuth von Speyer from

Coro Coro or CORO may refer to: Entertainment * ''Coro'' (Berio), a composition by Luciano Berio * Coro (music), Italian for choir * Coro TV, Venezuelan community television channel * Omweso (Coro), mancala game played in the Lango region of Uganda * ...

in Venezuela to the borders of the Amazon bassin (1535 - 1538). He describes them as "very good looking people and very able in defending themselves." Indeed, Hohermuths army never was able to make peace with the Guayupe, crossing their entire land from the northern shores of Upía river down to the regions south of the Guaviare river. On their way, the conquistadors were engaged in various skirmishes and even in a big battle with the Guayupe warriors. "They tried their luck on us frequently but although they killed and wounded many of us, we always gave them the rawer deal. This nation fights with bow and arrow and spears and shields made of tapir skin, and they throw gins." The Germans were not the very first Europeans to encounter the Guayupe. Near the Guaviare river they found some items of clearly european origin. As they knew later, it were belongings of an expedition led by Alonso de Herrera, who likely came up the Guaviare river with boats. In 1934, the Guayupe "had slaughtered 90 of Herrera's men and the survivors escaped downstream. In Coro, we met some of them." The Guayupe are a tribe of farmers living in the tropical mountain forests of the Eastern Ranges and the Llanos of Meta, Colombia. In pre-Columbian times they constructed pallisades around their villages consisting of houses around a central square with a ceremonial building in the middle.Onofrio, 1995, p.438 Because of the sophisticated defence works including palisades, thorn bushes and well-camouflaged pitfalls, the Spanish soldiers in Hohermuth's army nicknamed one of those well fortified villages "Little Salses", referring to the Catalan

Fort de Salses The Fort de Salses (also called Forteresse de Salses) is a Catalan fortress in the ''commune'' of Salses-le-Château, situated in the French ''département'' of Pyrénées-Orientales. It is clearly visible from the A9 autoroute as well as the t ...

, an innovative type of fortress at this time. The Guayupe were an

agricultural Agriculture or farming is the practice of cultivating Plant, plants and livestock. Agriculture was the key development in the rise of Sedentism, sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of Domestication, domesticated species created food ...

society with yuca one of their main crops. The Guayupe people went naked, only ornamented with gold, feathers and shells. The Guayupe society was organised around the ''

cacique A ''cacique'' (Latin American ; ; feminine form: ''cacica'') was a tribal chieftain of the Taíno people, the indigenous inhabitants at European contact of the Bahamas, the Greater Antilles, and the northern Lesser Antilles. The term is a Spa ...

s''; chiefs of the community. The ''cacique'' was regarded as an important person who lived by strict norms in the ceremonial activities; births, marriages and burials. When a ''cacique'' of the Guayupe died, the body was cremated and his successor had to drink his ash mixed with

chicha ''Chicha'' is a fermented (alcoholic) or non-fermented beverage of Latin America, emerging from the Andes and Amazonia regions. In both the pre- and post-Spanish conquest periods, corn beer (''chicha de jora'') made from a variety of maize land ...

. The society of the Guayupe was egalitarian; ''

s'' only had the use of stools and more feathers on their blankets. At every marriage, half of the bride treasure was going to the ''cacique''. They built canoes of wood and consumed yuca and

casabe Tapioca (; ) is a starch extracted from the storage roots of the cassava plant (''Manihot esculenta,'' also known as manioc), a species native to the North and Northeast regions of Brazil, but whose use is now spread throughout South America. ...

, fish and meat. They didn't eat bird meat.Cultura Guayupe
/ref> According to scholar

, the Guayupe defecated in the rivers around and not near their houses.

Religion

As in the Muisca religion, the main gods were the Sun and the Moon who were husband and wife.The Guayupe of Granada, Meta
/ref> The supreme being of the Guayupe, in the Muisca religion called Chiminigagua, was ''Inaynagui''. The products the Guayupe used in their rituals were coca and tobacco. Cannibalism is not reported of the Guayupe.

Modern age

In 1996, fifteen ceramic pots were found, pertaining to the Guayupe culture. In 2011, after the excavation of a Guayupe burial site, the museum of the Guayupe in Fuente de Oro was opened, containing bones, burial urns, artefacts and plates. As of 2009 yearly a ''Reina de Guayupe'', miss contest in Puerto Santander, located at from the urban centre of Fuente de Oro, 1999
Guayupe museum
- El Tiempo is held among the Guayupe.Díaz Moreno, 2012, p.187

References

Bibliography

* * * * *Fray Pedro Aguado. ''Recopilación Historial'', Parte 2, Vol. III. Bogotá 1957. *Eberhard Schmitt, Friedrich Karl von Hutten (ed.): ''Das Gold der Neuen Welt. Die Papiere des Welser-Konquistadors und Generalkapitäns von Venezuela Philipp von Hutten 1534–1541''. 2., neubearb. Aufl. Verlag Spitz, Berlin 1999, ISBN 3-87061-862-0.