Timoto

The Timoto are the Andean farming people of western Venezuela, usually grouped with the neighbouring Cuica as the Timoto-Cuica. They lived in the mountain valleys of the Chama and Motatan rivers, in what are now Merida, Trujillo and Tachira, and their language was related to that of the Muisca of Colombia.

They built irrigated terraces on the hillsides and grew maize, potatoes and beans, lived in permanent stone-and-wood villages with water tanks, and traded cotton, salt and cacao. They left fine pottery but no large monuments. Venezuelan historians report that in 1549 the Timoto and Cuica joined against the Spanish at Escuque and drove them back to El Tocuyo.