Huancapampa

The Huancapampa, also called Huancabambas, were an indigenous people of the Piura highlands in northern Peru, settled around the upper Huancabamba River between the western and eastern Andean ranges. Archaeological finds point to Amazonian origins, and they were neighbours and relatives of the Guayacundos, Cañaris and Bracamoros.

They worshipped the jaguar until the Inca Túpac Yupanqui conquered the region around 1480, suppressed the old cults, imposed sun worship and installed mitimae colonists, building the provincial centres of Caxas and Huancabamba.

In 1532 Hernando de Soto's advance party passed through Huancapampa, then more populous than Caxas, on its way to meet Atahualpa. Under Spanish rule the people were granted in encomienda and gathered into reductions; their original language gave way to Quechua and later Spanish, though native communities around Huancabamba survived into the republican period.