They cultivated cotton, from which they made their clothing, the material of which often exhibited various colored designs. In this respect they were far in advance of the surrounding tribes, who had no more to cover them than have the wildest children of the tropical forest to-day.
Their houses were of wood, with thatched roofs not unlike many of those we saw along our route from the llanos to the Magdalena valley. When the Spaniards arrived they had just begun to use stone in the erection of a few of their buildings, presumably temples, which apparently were never completed.
As might be surmised, their commerce was limited. They bartered to some extent with the neighboring tribes, especially those west of the Magdalena. From these they obtained gold in exchange for salt, emeralds and textile fabrics. With the Chimus of Peru, they were the first to use gold as a medium of exchange. Their currency consisted not of stamped coins, but of disks of the precious metal without any kind of marking. They had a limited intercourse with the people of Quito and had some slight knowledge of the great Inca kingdom farther south.
Regarding the culture of the Chibchas, we can say what the Marquis de Nadaillac says of the people in general—“We know very little.”[6] But we know enough to be warranted in affirming that many erroneous notions have long prevailed concerning them, and that the claims that have been made for them as a civilized people have been greatly exaggerated.
According to Duquesne—to whose fanciful theories the great Humboldt unfortunately gave his support—and to the school that for a century made Duquesne’s views their own, the Chibchas were acquainted with the use of the quipus, and had a system of numbers and hieroglyphics and a complicated calendar. Their priests were represented as the depositaries of astrological and chronological science, and as experts in astronomical and meteorological observations. The people were lauded for their advanced knowledge of architecture and praised for their courts of justice. In the temple of Sogamuxi, they would have us believe, were preserved the national annals and the chronicles of their civilization. Their general material progress and intellectual status was commented on as something quite comparable with the best that obtained in Mexico or Cuzco.
We have but two sources of information respecting the much-debated question of Chibcha culture. These are a comparative study of the early chronicles—no one or two of them will suffice—and an examination of the few stone monuments the Chibchas have left us, together with their pictographs, ceramic ware and objects of gold and copper found in their places of sepulture. The chronicles that we must rely on are those left us by Quesada, Castellanos, Padre Simon and Piedrahita, all of which have already been quoted, together with those left us by Padre Bernardo Lugo, Juan Rodriguez Fresle, a son of one of the conquistadores, and Fray Alonso de Zamora, of Bogotá.
As a result of a critical study of these chronicles and monuments, the distinguished Colombian writer, Don Vicente Restrepo, has demonstrated that most of the claims that have been made for Chibcha culture are utterly devoid of foundation in fact. His conclusions, which can be given in a few words, are:—
“The Chibchas had no stone buildings and their knowledge of architecture was therefore limited to the erection of the simplest structures of wood.
“They had no quipus, like that of the Incas, no alphabet, and no writing of any kind, either figurative, symbolic or ideographic. Neither had they any chronology or archives.
“The petroglyphs and pictographs found in limited[7] numbers in various parts of the country, far from recording the migrations and hunts of the aborigines and the cataclysms which they are supposed to have witnessed, are nothing more than rude geometrical designs and fantastic figures which are repeated in the most confused manner, according to the infantile caprice of the one who carved or painted them.”