Chibcha

Chibcha, also Muisca, important South American nation or confederacy centering, at the time of the Spanish Conquest, on the upper Magdalena River, around Bogotá, Colombia. Detached tribes of the same stock were found along the Central American isthmus and in Costa Rica. Culturally, the Chibcha resembled the Inca; they practiced farming with the aid of an extensive system of irrigation, wove cotton cloth, and worked gold with a high degree of skill, although they were ignorant of the use of copper and bronze. Next to the Inca, the Chibcha had the largest, most politically centralized society in South America when the Europeans arrived. The Chibcha offered heroic resistance to the Spaniards but were finally subdued and nearly exterminated. See also Native American Languages; Native Americans of Middle and South America: Caribbean and Northern Andes.