Kayambi

Kayambi was the pre-Inca language of the Kayambi people of the northern Ecuadorian highlands, around the Cayambe volcano north of Quito. It is known almost only from place names ending in -bi, and like Caranqui it may have belonged to the Barbacoan family, though the evidence is inconclusive.

From about 1500 the Kayambi confederation with the neighbouring Caranqui, led by the Cochasquí ruler Quilago, held out for some twenty years against Huayna Capac before defeat at the lake of Yawarkucha ended its independence. The Incas then settled Quechua-speaking colonists in the region and the Kayambi adopted Kichwa; their old tongue, like Caranqui, is thought to have died out during the eighteenth century.