Muisca

Hello! We are the Muisca people, and we want to share our story with you. For hundreds of years, our home has been high up in the beautiful Andes Mountains. This is in the country that people now call Colombia. We did not live on the pointy tops of the mountains. Instead, we lived on high, flat lands called plateaus. The air there is cool and fresh, and it was a wonderful place for our communities to grow.

Living on mountains meant we had to be clever farmers. To grow our food, we built special steps on the mountainsides. These are called terraces, and they create small, flat gardens on the steep slopes. Building them was hard work, but it allowed us to plant our most important foods. We grew lots of corn and potatoes, which were a big part of our meals and helped keep our families strong and healthy. We became experts at farming in our mountain home.

Our lands gave us special gifts from the earth. We were famous for our work with two of these gifts: gold and salt. We were skilled artists who could shape gold into beautiful figures. We called these small gold figures tunjos. For us, gold was not used like money to buy things. It was sacred, which means it was very special to us. We used our beautiful gold creations in important ceremonies. Our salt mines were also very important. We would trade the salt we mined with other groups who lived nearby.

We have a very old story that came from one of our most important ceremonies. It is the legend of El Dorado, which means “the Gilded One.” The story says that when a new leader was chosen, he would be covered in gold dust until he shone like the sun. He would then travel to a sacred lake and offer gold treasures into the water as part of the ceremony. This legend became famous all around the world.

A long time ago, people from Spain arrived in our lands. After they came, many of our traditions and ways of life changed. It was a difficult time for our people. But it is very important to know that the Muisca people did not disappear. Our story did not end.

Today, our Muisca communities are still here, living in Colombia. We are proud of our long history and our ancestors who were expert farmers and artists. We work hard to keep our culture strong for our children. We are keeping our language, our traditions, and our stories alive so that they will continue for many, many years to come.