THE MUISCA PEOPLE.

The Muisca are the Chibcha-speaking people that formed the Muisca Confederation of the Central Andean Highlands of present-day Colombia Eastern Range, in particular the Altiplano Cundi- Boya cense, a region slightly larger than Swit-Zerland.
Their territory spanned an area of around 47,000 sq km/18,000 sq mi, from the North of Boyaca to the Sumapaz Paramo and from the Summits of the Eastern Range to the Magdalena Valley.
Boyaca is one of the 32 departments of Colombia, and the remnant of Boyaca State, one of the original 9 states of the United States of Colombia. It is centrally located within Colombia, almost entirely within the Mountains of the Eastern Cordillera to the border with Venezuela.
The word "Boyaca" derived from the chibchan word "Bojaca" which means "Region of the Royal Mantle." The territory of present-day Boyaca was the ancient domain of the Muisca, that lived mainly by agriculture and mining gold and emeralds.
The Muisca people were organized in a confederation that was a loose union of states that each retained sovereignty. It was not a kingdom, neither have a monarch, nor was it an empire, because it did not dominate other ethnic groups, neither exercised absolute power, nor rigid or strict control over those whom they owed their power.  Instead, the Muisca, was one of the biggest and best-organized confederations on the very Northern Andean Mountains.
Most of the communities shared the same language and culture and were interrelated by their trade. Each group was ruled by a "Chief (cacique)," who exercised a position of great honor. Its nomination followed a very elaborated ceremony. It was inherited, but the line of succession was nor patrilineal. The successor was through the oldest son of the oldest daughter. The position had such a respect that not even the members of the sacred class dared to look at him in the face, and it is said if the "Chief" needed to spit, someone would hold a piece of rich cloth for him to spit on, because it would be sacrilegious for anything so precious as his saliva to touch the ground. Whoever held the cloth (while all present carefully looking the other way) then carried it off to be reverently disposed of. and united in the face of a common enemy.
The "Chief" was also given the responsibility of offering gold to the gods. He would cover himself with gold and float out on a royal barge to the middle of the sacred Lake Guatavita, where he would offer up golden trinkets. Everything was a symbolic representation of their souls that were worked and maintained as gold in order to be pick as an offering for their sacred gods. The Spaniards did not understand the meaning of the ritual, and it is widely believed that this ritual started the development of the legend of "El Dorado."
The army, made up of the traditional ancient warriors (gueches), separated as a cast of a very different race. It was a group of people  who formed a very special class and used to breed with each other for their spiritual and physical characteristics and personality traits, also for the work they performed as the spiritual and physical guardians of the Muisca territory. They were chosen from the most tough, courageous, and brave circle of men, born to be warriors. They were men of great bodies, bold in their characters, very determined, and vigilant with big beautiful arrangement, lightness and skill. By contrast  to the ordinary Muisca who used the shoulder-length hair, most warriors had very short hair for safety and disengage in combat, but as an exception of the rule, some of the highest-ranking "Chiefs" wore long hair so they could roll it over within a wreath of feathers. Other major chieftain chose to wear bonnets or caps cotton network. Their weapons were clubs, darts, spears, arrows, sligshots, bows, etc.
They went to major combat with beautiful curled feather plumes from parrots, many of them founded in wide ribbons of fine gold, encrusted with emeralds intervals, bracelets and fine coral beads.
Common Muisca were not allowed to use paints, galas, jewelry, also no woman would use them either.
The jewels were only for men, priests, chiefs who were very brave and deserved it, and on the rich wore blankets and bodies during processions, ceremonies and contests.
In the event of a battle, they were in charge of the protection of the "Chiefs" because of the united  power they engaged all together to overcome the common enemy. All the battles were fought in the spiritual world with the outcome in the material world. Their military success were richly rewarded. Those who fell in battle received posthumous honors which meant that their bodies were adorned with certain balsams and taken on the shoulders of other fighters, so that their presence cheer stiff and infuse life into the soldiers in the war. Their status as soldiers was not hereditary; dignity was not being reached by birth. it was only available to men of courage and great arm strength.
They still have their customs alive and only a remnant survive in the same land that their ancestors had with a high prestige long time ago.