Aingae

The Cofán call themselves the A'i and speak A'ingae. Their homeland lies in northeastern Ecuador and southern Colombia, between the Guamués and Aguarico rivers.

In the late sixteenth century they resisted Spanish colonization and destroyed the Spanish town of Mocoa. The Jesuit Rafael Ferrer, who arrived in 1602, was driven out only after soldiers and colonists tried to follow him. European diseases then caused their numbers to collapse, from about 15,000 in the mid-sixteenth century.