Pijao

The Pijao were a federation of allied chiefdoms in the central Colombian Andes, spread along the Central Cordillera and the upper valleys of the Magdalena and Cauca rivers. They never formed a centralised state. Their priests, called mohanes, led animist rites centred on rivers and mountains.

The Pijao fought the Spaniards over control of the Magdalena, Cauca and Saldaña rivers in wars that lasted some eighty years. Between 1605 and 1615 Juan de Borja y Armendia led pacification campaigns, founding Natagaima in 1606 to settle the survivors. War, conversion to Catholicism and mixing with settlers broke the federation.