The colonial period was demographically catastrophic for the Muisca and other Indigenous peoples of the Altiplano; disease, displacement, and forced labor resulted in severe population decline.

Whether the genetic heritage of the Herrera-Muisca population survives in any modern communities — and in what proportions and distributions — is a question that modern genomic studies of contemporary populations could address.

The People Who Will Never Be Named

There is something that the science cannot give to the Checua people, and it is worth naming honestly.

We cannot know their names.

We cannot know the language they spoke, the stories they told about themselves and their world, the names they gave to the hills and valleys of the Checua River valley, or the words they used for the animals they hunted and the plants they gathered.