The Tairona civilization in the region of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta in the present-day Magdalena and La Guajira Departments of Colombia, and ...

None of Colombia's native peoples develop a system of writing comparable to that of the Mayas, and much less will the Spaniards encounter a native empire such as that of either the Aztecs or Incas.

By 1500, the most advanced of the indigenous peoples are two Chibcha groups: the Taironas and the Muiscas.

The Taironas, who appear to have been fairly late arrivals from Central America, inhabit well-organized towns connected by roads on the lower slopes of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta in the far north of Colombia, rising just to the east of Santa Marta, Colombia's oldest city.

Politically, they have progressed beyond the stage of local chieftainships, forming two larger, and rival, confederations.

They are also the only people to construct works of engineering such as stone temples and stone-paved roads.

The first Europeans to visit what is now Colombia are the crew of Alonso de Ojeda, who in 1499 leads an expedition to the north coast of South America.

It reaches Cabo de la Vela, on the Peninsula de La Guajira, but does not tarry, because these visitors are interested in trading for gold and pearls, not in colonization.

Amerigo Vespucci, as a member of Ojeda's expedition, is among the first to explore the Colombian coasts.

Other early expeditions also come to trade, or to seize indigenous people as slaves for sale in the West Indies.

A number of indigenous groups inhabit the South American continent.

Our understanding of the peoples of this region is limited due to a combination of tropical weather, significant rainfall, and the destruction and misrepresentation of many records by Spanish conquistadors.

The Tairona of present Colombia form mid- to large-size population centers, consisting of stone pathways, terraces, protected waterways, and spaces dedicated to agricultural produce.

Their economy is primarily agricultural, cultivating corn, pineapple, yucca, and other local foodstuffs.

The Tairona are considered quite advanced for their time period.

Surviving archaeological sites consist of formed terraces and small scale underground stone channels.

They also are known to actively collect and process salt, which is a significant trading commodity.

We know that they traded with other indigenous groups along the coast and interior.

Archaeological excavations have recovered significant works in pottery, stonework and gold.

In 1520 the governorship of Trinidad had been granted to Spanish explorer Rodrigo de Bastidas, but this had been opposed by Diego Columbus, and Bastidas had waived the grant.

He received instead permission to exploit a region from Cabo de la Vela westward to the Magdalena River; however this expedition had been delayed for several years.

In 1524 he returns to the New World and on July 29 founds the City of Santa Marta on the Caribbean coast of Colombia, naming it so because it is on Saint Martha's feast day that the city is founded. A first permanent Spanish settlement on the Colombian coast is founded in 1525 at Santa Marta; it is close to the territory of the Taironas and will later serve as a base for conquest of the Muiscas.

Bastidas, who prohibits his troops from brutally using the Indians or robbing them of their goods, trades for a substantial amount of gold on a trip to the interior and the territories of Bonda and Bondigua in present day Colombia.

His troops, many of whom have gone adventuring in the hopes of obtaining gold, ask Bastidas for a share.

He refused to share it with his men, saying that he needs it to help defray the costs of the colony.

Bastidas' refusal to share the gold that he had acquired greatly angers some of his men, among them his lieutenant Villafuerte, who leads a conspiracy of some fifty men to murder Bastidas.

One night while Bastidas is asleep he is attacked and stabbed five times.

He is able to cry out, and his men rush to his aid.

Although seriously wounded, he does not die immediately.

Owing to a lack of adequate medical facilities in Santa Marta, Bastidas attempts to sail to Santo Domingo, but bad weather forces him to land in Cuba, where he dies from his injuries.

Later, his only son, Archbishop Rodrigo de Bastidas y Rodriguez de Romera, will move his remains to Santo Domingo, where he is interred along with his wife and son (Bishop Bastidas) at The Cathedral of Santa María la Menor in the Colonial Zone of Santo Domingo, the oldest cathedral in the Americas.

Pedro de Heredia, a son of Pedro de Heredia and Inés Fernandez, is a descendant of a rich family of noble lineage.

The chronicler Juan de Castellanos tells that even in his early years, he showed an adventurous and quarrelsome character.

In his youth, Pedro de Heredia had been involved in an altercation with six men who tried to kill him in a dark alley in Madrid.

The fight had left him with a disfigured nose that required the intervention of a doctor from the Spanish Crown.

In retaliation, Heredia had hunted down three of his attackers and killed them before fleeing to the New World to evade justice, leaving behind his wife and children.

Heredia had traveled to the West Indies with his brother Alonso de Heredia and settled in Santo Domingo, the capital of the island of Hispaniola, where he eventually inherited a sugar mill and an estate in Azua Province.

Then came news of the death of the governor of Santa Marta, Rodrigo de Bastidas, and the Royal Audiencia of Santo Domingo decided to send Pedro de Vadillo as interim governor of the province and Pedro de Heredia as his lieutenant.

In 1527, Vadillo and Heredia had landed in Santa Marta with two hundred men and soon became involved in disputes with Rodrigo Alvarez Palomino, a former lieutenant of Bastidas, which were resolved when the latter was drowned in the river that bears his name.

Vadillo had served as interim governor of Santa Marta but returned to Santo Domingo to face a residencia (an administrative and judicial tribunal).

In the meantime, Heredia continues in office until 1528, gaining extensive experience in his dealings with the Indians.

He accumulates a considerable booty from exchanges of mirrors, bells and other trinkets with the natives, then returns to Santo Domingo and sails back to Spain.

Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada was born in Cordova, Spain, into a Jewish family which had converted to Catholicism before he was born.

His father is a hidalgo relative of Gonzalo Francisco de Cordoba, and he has two known distant cousins: Hernán Cortes and Francisco Pizarro.

An Andalusian lawyer, trained in Granada, Quesada had been appointed chief magistrate in 1535 and second in command for an expedition to present-day Colombia, because in this period he isn’t in good standing with the people at home because he has just lost an important law case in which his mother’s family was economically involved.

The commander of the expedition, Pedro Fernández de Lugo (governor of the Canary Islands), has purchased the governorship of Colombia and has equipped a fleet and assembled over a thousand men.

Thus they set sail to Colombia, thinking they will find a very rich land, full of gold and pearls.

However, when, after two month of navigation, they reach the small coastal settlement of Santa Marta in early 1536, all they find was a conglomeration of hovels and filthy, disease-ridden colonists who go about dressed in skins or roughly woven and padded cotton clothes made by the Indians.

Soon food becomes scarce and tropical fevers began to strike down even the strongest.

From 1533, a belief has persisted that the Río Grande de la Magdalena is the trail to the South Sea, to Peru, to the legendary El Dorado.

Quesada, despite his lack of military experience, is chosen by de Lugo to command an expedition to explore into the interior of present Colombia, hoping to discover the dreamed El Dorado.

A land party of five hundred soldiers under Quesada, with Hernán Pérez de Quesada (his brother), Juan San Martín, Juan del Junco (as second in command) Lázaro Fonte and Sergio Bustillo, strikes south from Santa Marta on April 6, 1536, …

Bolívar’s dream of Gran Colombia is shattered with Venezuela and Ecuador having broken away to form independent states of their own.

Before setting sail and after a painful battle with tuberculosis, Bolívar dies on December 17, 1830, in the Quinta de San Pedro Alejandrino in Santa Marta, Gran Colombia (now Colombia).