Muzo

The Muzo were a Cariban-speaking people of the western Eastern Andes, between the Muisca plateau and the Magdalena River. Famed as the Emerald People, they worked the emerald veins with wooden tools and diverted streams; their myths made the gems the tears of the sacred mountain woman Fura. They traded maize and textiles to the Muisca and Panche.

They raided neighbours with curare-poisoned arrows; in 1518 they swept into the Muisca valley of Ubaté to carry off slaves. The Spanish conquest began after Muzo raids in 1544: an expedition under Diego Martinez was destroyed, and campaigns in 1550 and 1551 won little ground.

In 1558 and 1559 Luis Lancheros broke the resistance of the cacique Quirimaca; Villa de la Santisima Trinidad de los Muzos was founded and evangelisation began, while the emerald mines passed into Spanish hands.