Tahami

The Tahamí were a Chibchan-speaking people of the eastern highlands of Antioquia, in the valley of Aburra and the lands between the Magdalena River and the Porce and Nechí. Their name meant 'those who live farther out', and they shared language and customs with their northern neighbours the Nutabe while remaining independent.

They lived in small hereditary chiefdoms; in war the clans confederated under the local chief who had shown the most courage. They buried their dead with gold ornaments and venerated the forest and the jaguar.

Spanish parties entered the region in the second half of the sixteenth century, and the Tahamí were soon parceled out in encomiendas. In the 1570s and 1580s the encomendero Bartolomé Sánchez Torre Blanca forced them into repeated wars against the Nutabe to feed a trade in captives; demographic collapse, enslavement and missionary work then carried away their language and much of their society.