A'ingae

A'ingae, also called Cofán, is the language of the A'i people living between the Guamués and Aguarico rivers where the Andes meet the Amazon, in northeastern Ecuador and southern Colombia. The name means in the manner of the people, from a'i, person. Once linked to Chibchan or other Andean groupings, it is treated as a language isolate, though it carries borrowings from Tukanoan, Cariban and Quechuan.

Inca pressure had driven the A'i from the cordillera into the lowlands. In the late sixteenth century they destroyed the Spanish town of Mocoa and forced the colonists to withdraw; the Jesuit Rafael Ferrer, who arrived in 1602, was likewise driven out.

Epidemics cut the people from some fifteen thousand to a few hundred, but the language remained the foundation of Cofán identity through the colonial centuries.