Muisca Confederation

The Muisca Confederations were loose political groupings of Muisca chiefdoms in the eastern Andean highlands of what is now Colombia, in the region known today as the Altiplano Cundiboyacense, spanning parts of the modern departments of Boyaca, Cundinamarca and Santander, in the period before the Spanish conquest of northern South America. Rather than forming a single unified state, the Muisca lived under multiple independent regional confederations, each centered on a paramount chiefdom, called a zipa or zaque, that smaller neighboring chiefdoms recognized and paid tribute to; the two most prominent of these paramount rulers governed from the centers of Bacata, near modern Bogota, and Hunza, near modern Tunja. The Muisca economy relied on agriculture, salt extraction and extensive trade in emeralds and worked gold objects, a tradition that contributed to later Spanish legends of El Dorado. Spanish forces under Gonzalo Jimenez de Quesada conquered the Muisca chiefdoms in 1537, bringing the confederations' independent political existence to an end.