Barbakoan

Barbakoan, or Barbacoan, is a language family spread across the Pacific lowlands and Andes of south-western Colombia and northern Ecuador. Around 1337 its varieties served peoples including the Pasto, the Cara or Caranqui north of Quito, the Awa on the Pacific slope, and the Tsáchila and Chachi in the coastal jungles.

In the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries Inca armies under Topa Inca Yupanqui and Huayna Capac conquered the Ecuadorian highlands, and the Kichwa dialect of Quechua they planted began replacing local speech, as among the Otavalo.

Spanish forces took Quito in 1534, and encomienda rule, epidemics and the spread of Spanish drove highland Barbakoan tongues such as Pasto and Cara to extinction. Cara lingered among the Caranqui until the eighteenth century; forest peoples such as the Tsáchila, Chachi and Awa kept their languages alive in their homelands.