Palta

The Palta were a pre-Inca people of southern Ecuador, occupying the mountain valleys of Loja and the upper Zamora region. Their traditions derive them from Amazonian Jíbaro groups who crossed the eastern Andes; their Jivaroan or Chicham language was heavily influenced by Quechua. Their confederation of chiefdoms centred on the Cuxibamba valley, with an estimated population of eighty to a hundred thousand before the Inca invasion.

They grew maize and cassava, irrigating terraces through reservoirs called cochas and fertilizing fields with guano. Their warriors resisted Túpac Yupanqui's Inca armies from hilltop forts around Saraguro, but the confederation was broken.

Within four or five generations the Palta lost their language and organization under Inca and then Spanish rule; in 1592 the Garrochamba, one of their chiefdoms, were drafted into the mines of Zaruma.