The Tegua or Tecua were an

Arawak The Arawak are a group of Indigenous peoples of northern South America and of the Caribbean. The term "Arawak" has been applied at various times to different Indigenous groups, from the Lokono of South America to the Taíno (Island Arawaks), w ...

-speaking

indigenous people There is no generally accepted definition of Indigenous peoples, although in the 21st century the focus has been on self-identification, cultural difference from other groups in a state, a special relationship with their traditional territ ...

Colombia Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia, is a country primarily located in South America with Insular region of Colombia, insular regions in North America. The Colombian mainland is bordered by the Caribbean Sea to the north, Venezuel ...

who died out in the 19th century.Historia de los Teguas
/ref> The territories of the Tegua stretched from

Macanal Macanal is a town and municipality in the Colombian Department of Boyacá, part of the subregion of the Neira Province. The urban centre is located in the Tenza Valley in the Eastern Ranges of the Colombian Andes at an elevation of but parts ...

, Boyacá in the west to Aguazul in the east and from

Berbeo Berbeo is a town and municipality in the Lengupá Province, part of the Colombian department of Boyacá. The urban centre of Berbeo is located at an altitude of in the Eastern Ranges of the Colombian Andes. Berbeo borders San Eduardo in the ea ...

in the north to Villanueva in the south, on the eastern flanks of the

Eastern Ranges The Eastern Ranges is an Australian rules football team that currently competes in the Talent League, the Victorian statewide under-18s competition. History Inaugural playing squad (1992) Honours *Premiers (2): 2002, 2013 *Runners-up (6): 199 ...

of the Colombian

Andes The Andes ( ), Andes Mountains or Andean Mountain Range (; ) are the List of longest mountain chains on Earth, longest continental mountain range in the world, forming a continuous highland along the western edge of South America. The range ...

. Knowledge of the Tegua is scarce, but has been provided by pre-modern

scholars A scholar is a person who is a researcher or has expertise in an academic discipline. A scholar can also be an academic, who works as a professor, teacher, or researcher at a university. An academic usually holds an advanced degree or a terminal ...

Lucas Fernández de Piedrahita Lucas Fernández de Piedrahita (1624, Bogotá – March 29, 1688) was a Spanish Neogranadine Roman Catholic prelate who served as the Bishop of Panamá (1676–1688) ''(in Latin)'' and the Bishop of Santa Marta (1668–1676).Arzobispo de Pa ...

, Basilio Fernández de Oviedo and

Pedro Simón ''Fray'' Pedro Simón ( San Lorenzo de la Parrilla, Spain, 1574 - Ubaté, New Kingdom of Granada, ca. 1628) was a Spanish Franciscan friar, professor and chronicler of the indigenous peoples of modern-day Colombia and Venezuela, at the time f ...

and in modern times by

Javier Ocampo López Javier Ocampo López (born 19 June 1939) is a Colombian historian, writer, folklorist and professor. He has been important in the fields of Colombian folklore and history of Latin America and Colombia, especially contributing on the department ...

and Pedro Gustavo Huertas Ramírez.Las esmeraldas de Colombia
/ref>Los Teguas
- El Tiempo

Etymology

The name of the people Tegua, originally meaning "boy", is presently a word in

Colombian Spanish Colombian Spanish () is a grouping of the varieties of Spanish spoken in Colombia. The term is of more geographical than linguistic relevance, since the dialects spoken in the various regions of Colombia are quite diverse. The speech of the nor ...

and means "shaman" or "witchdoctor", referring to the advanced knowledge the Tegua had of medicinal plants.Tesoros legendarios
/ref>

Tegua territory

The Tegua inhabited the area of the lower and central Lengupá River valley in the

of the Colombian

and the foothills (''Piedemonte'') towards the

Llanos Orientales The Llanos (Spanish ''Los Llanos'', "The Plains"; ) is a vast tropical grassland plain situated to the east of the Andes in Colombia and Venezuela, in northwestern South America. It is an ecoregion of the tropical and subtropical grasslands, sa ...

, such as the Casanare municipalities Recetor, Chámeza and Aguazul. To the south, the Guayupe were living, the eastern part was bordering the territories of the Achagua and the western and northern terrains were inhabited by the

Muisca The Muisca (also called the Chibcha) are indigenous peoples in Colombia and were a Pre-Columbian culture of the Altiplano Cundiboyacense that formed the Muisca Confederation before the Spanish colonization of the Americas. The Muisca spe ...

. The Tegua living east of Guatavita paid tribute to the Muisca. The origin of the Tegua people was in Campohermoso, Boyacá, where both the Lengupá and

Upía River Upía River, a river in Colombia originating at Lake Tota (5°29'31" N, 72°56'04" W), is a tributary of the Meta River flowing into the Orinoco River basin. See also *List of rivers of Colombia Atlantic Ocean Amazon River Basin * Amazon R ...

s flow.Campohermoso rescata su memoria histórica
- El TiempoHistoria de Campohermoso
/ref>

Municipalities belonging to Tegua territories

Description

De Piedrahita has written that the Tegua spoke another language and looked different from the Muisca. As noted by Pedro Simón, the Tegua had a diet formed by

maize Maize (; ''Zea mays''), also known as corn in North American English, is a tall stout grass that produces cereal grain. It was domesticated by indigenous peoples in southern Mexico about 9,000 years ago from wild teosinte. Native American ...

honey Honey is a sweet and viscous substance made by several species of bees, the best-known of which are honey bees. Honey is made and stored to nourish bee colonies. Bees produce honey by gathering and then refining the sugary secretions of pl ...

fish A fish (: fish or fishes) is an aquatic animal, aquatic, Anamniotes, anamniotic, gill-bearing vertebrate animal with swimming fish fin, fins and craniate, a hard skull, but lacking limb (anatomy), limbs with digit (anatomy), digits. Fish can ...

coca Coca is any of the four cultivated plants in the family Erythroxylaceae, native to western South America. Coca is known worldwide for its psychoactive alkaloid, cocaine. Coca leaves contain cocaine which acts as a mild stimulant when chewed or ...

and

peanut The peanut (''Arachis hypogaea''), also known as the groundnut, goober (US), goober pea, pindar (US) or monkey nut (UK), is a legume crop grown mainly for its edible seeds. It is widely grown in the tropics and subtropics by small and large ...

s. They cultivated

yuca ''Manihot esculenta'', commonly called cassava, manioc, or yuca (among numerous regional names), is a woody shrub of the spurge family, Euphorbiaceae, native to South America, from Brazil, Paraguay and parts of the Andes. Although a perennia ...

and made pies of yuca and

ants Ants are eusocial insects of the family Formicidae and, along with the related wasps and bees, belong to the order Hymenoptera. Ants evolved from vespoid wasp ancestors in the Cretaceous period. More than 13,800 of an estimated total of ...

.La yuca, alimento prehispánico
/ref> The chroniclers of the 17th century describe a Tegua woman with the assigned name ''La Cardeñosa'', as a beautiful Tegua. The first contact with the Tegua was made in 1538 by Juan de San Martín. In 1556 the evangelization process was started to convert the Tegua to

Catholicism The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the List of Christian denominations by number of members, largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics Catholic Church by country, worldwid ...

. Names of Tegua ''

cacique A cacique, sometimes spelled as cazique (; ; feminine form: ), was a tribal chieftain of the Taíno people, who were the Indigenous inhabitants of the Bahamas, the Greater Antilles, and the northern Lesser Antilles at the time of European cont ...

s'' are reinstalled as street names of Campohermoso; ''Pirazica'', ''Yayogua'', ''Onayomba'' and ''Yapompo''.

References

{{authority control Indigenous peoples in Colombia Culture of Colombia