Casa del Fundador Gonzalo Suárez Rendón

Background

The Altiplano Cundiboyacense, the central high plateau in the Eastern Ranges of the Colombian Andes before the Spanish conquest, was inhabited by the Muisca, a collection of indigenous people who spoke a version of Chibcha; Muysccubun. Their egalitarian society and economy was self-sufficient and based on agriculture, trading with various surrounding indigenous groups and the mining of halite, giving them the name "The Salt People". They lived in small settlements of ten to one hundred bohíos scattered in the valleys of the Andes. Their system of hierarchy consisted of caciques and priests and the cacique of certain settlements were guarding larger areas. The main leaders of the community were the zipa based in Bacatá and the zaque based in Hunza, today known as Tunja.

In April 1536, a group of 800 conquistadors led by Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada left the Caribbean coastal city of Santa Marta on a harsh expedition into the heart of the Andes. This journey, that took one year and the lives of eighty percent of their men, led them into what was called by early chroniclers the "Muisca Confederation". After submitting the southern Muisca who lived on the Bogotá savanna in April 1537, the troops split up and Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada, his brother Hernán Pérez de Quesada and various others set foot to the northeast, where they reached the territories of the hoa in August 1537. hoa Eucaneme was defeated by the Spanish on August 20, 1537, in his bohío in Hunza. What followed were several other expeditions to parts of the Muisca Confederation and the foundation of the city of Bogotá on August 6, 1538, becoming the capital of the New Kingdom of Granada, as the colonial lands of the Spanish Empire was called after the home region of the brothers De Quesada in Andalusia, Spain.

Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada embarked a ship in Cartagena with several other conquistadors for Spain in the first half of 1539 and left the control of the new colony in the hands of his brother. Under his command, various atrocities were committed against the caciques of the Muisca; Sagipa and Quiminnza (the successor of Eucaneme) were decapitated in public spectacles. One of the captains of Hernán Pérez de Quesada was Gonzalo Suárez Rendón, who was sent from Bogotá to Hunza, founding the city of Tunja as second-most Spanish colonial settlement on the Altiplano on August 6, 1539. The Spanish set up a system of encomiendas and Suárez Rendón became the first encomendero of Tunja.