Cuicas

The Cuicas were one of the two main tribes of the Timoto–Cuica people of the Andes of western Venezuela, in what are now Trujillo, Mérida and Táchira. They were closely related to the Muisca of the Colombian Andes, who spoke Chibcha, and lived somewhat north of their Timote kin.

Before the Spanish conquest in the sixteenth century they lived in permanent villages of stone and wood houses with thatched roofs, ringed by irrigated terraces of potatoes, maize and beans. They stored water in tanks, wove fibre textiles and made human-shaped pottery, but left no great monuments. They traded cotton, cacao and salt, and were mostly peaceful farmers.