Katapas

The Katapas, also written Catapas, were an Intermediate Area people of the northern Costa Rican lowlands, living between the Frio and Zapote rivers when the Spanish arrived in the sixteenth century. Together with their Tises neighbours they formed part of the Botos chiefdom, which paid tribute to Garabito, king of the western Huetar, and their language was probably one of the Chibchan family.

In 1569 Governor Perafan de Ribera distributed the Katapas along with the Botos, Corobici and Abangares in encomienda to Aranjuez, and they were resettled at San Ildefonso de Atapas on the Gulf of Nicoya.

Cut off from their territory and held to forced labour, the community withered; the settlement had ceased to exist by the end of the seventeenth century, taking the Katapas as a distinct people with it.