Lache people in the context of Muisca mummification

Hernán Pérez de Quesada, sometimes spelled as Quezada, (c. 1515 – 1544) was a Spanish conquistador. Second in command of the army of his elder brother, Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada, Hernán was part of the first European expedition towards the inner highlands of the Colombian Andes. The harsh journey, taking almost a year and many deaths, led through the modern departments Magdalena, Cesar, Santander, Boyacá, Cundinamarca and Huila of present-day Colombia between 1536 and 1539 and, without him, Meta, Caquetá and Putumayo of Colombia and northern Peru and Ecuador between 1540 and 1542.

Hernán founded Sutatausa, Cundinamarca, and aided in the conquest of various indigenous groups, such as the Chimila, Muisca, Panche, Lache, U'wa, Sutagao and others. Under the command of Hernán Pérez de Quesada the last independent Muisca ruler; hoa Quiminza was publicly decapitated. As second in command under his brother, in the previous years psihipquias Tisquesusa and Sagipa and Tundama of Duitama had suffered a similar fate. After returning from his expeditions to the south reaching Quito, where he reunited with his younger brother Francisco, both De Quesadas went back to Santafé de Bogotá. Hernán was tried and imprisoned there for the murders of the Muisca rulers by the governor of the capital of the New Kingdom of Granada. In 1544, en route to Cartagena with his brother Francisco, their ship was hit by lightning off the coast of Cabo de la Vela in the Caribbean Sea killing Hernán and Francisco and wounding several other conquistadors.

Muisca Confederations were loose confederations of different Muisca chiefdoms in the Eastern Andean highlands of what is today Colombia before the Spanish conquest of northern South America. These unions, centred around main chiefdoms recognised by smaller ones, were not a single, even loose, muisca confederation of chiefdoms, but multiple, independent regional entities. The area, presently called Altiplano Cundiboyacense, comprised the current departments of Boyacá, Cundinamarca and minor parts of Santander.

Usually, Muisca chiefdoms were composed of various basic matrilineal units (uta, minor, or sibyn, major) called capitanías by the Spaniards. However, power was based on individual alliances of Muisca rulers with households or basic units. Often, sibyn were villages and uta groups of houses. Four confederations of chiefdoms formed in Muisca territory: Bogotá, Tunja, Duitama and Sogamoso. Additionally, the Chibcha-speaking Guane and Lache were also ruled by the confederation of Guanentá and the confederation of El Cocuy respectively. Different models exist to explain the nature of power among Muisca elites.

Muisca rulers were so-called "aggrandizers", that is charismatic leaders at the head of various factions, who forged alliances and relations of subordination with various communities and ruled over the Muisca, a pre-hispanic indigenous group of the Altiplano Cundiboyacense in the Eastern Andes. The Muisca communities did not have a unified political entity, but were ruled by several chiefdoms or cacicazgos, some of which formed confederations of chiefdoms. At the time of the Spanish invasion, four confederations were thriving in Muisca territory: Bogotá, Tunja, Duitama and Sogamoso. Additionally, there were independent chiefdoms in the north-west. The Chibcha-speaking Guane and Lache were also ruled by the confederation of Guanentá and the confederation of El Cocuy respectively.

Power was based simultaneously on prestige and authority, in the form of rules of succession and a degree of popular consent. Economically, chiefs (or caciques) are in permanent competition to show strengthen their legitimacy and power (and finance artisanery) by redistributing an accumulated surplus of goods. Chiefs had a distributing role as organizers of Muisca tamsas (erroneously translated as "tributes"), in receiving goods from their subjects and redistributing the accumulated products in exchange for labor.

The Muisca agriculture describes the agriculture of the Muisca, the advanced civilisation that was present in the times before the Spanish conquest on the high plateau in the Colombian Andes; the Altiplano Cundiboyacense. The Muisca were a predominantly agricultural society with small-scale farmfields, part of more extensive terrains. To diversify their diet, they traded mantles, gold, emeralds and salt for fruits, vegetables, coca, yopo and cotton cultivated in lower altitude warmer terrains populated by their neighbours, the Muzo, Panche, Guane, Guayupe, Lache, Sutagao and U'wa. Trade of products grown farther away happened with the Calima, Pijao and Caribbean coastal communities around the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta.

Important scholars who have contributed to the knowledge about the Muisca agriculture have been Pedro Simón, Marianne Cardale de Schrimpff, Carl Henrik Langebaek and Sylvia Broadbent.