Hispaniola
The primary indigenous group on the island of Hispaniola was the Arawak/Taíno people. The Arawak tribe originated in the Orinoco Delta, spreading from Venezuela. They travelled to Hispaniola around 1200 CE. Each society on the island was a small independent kingdom with a lead known as a cacique. In 1492, which is considered the peak of the Taíno, there were five different kingdoms on the island, the Xaragua, Higuey (Caizcimu), Magua (Huhabo), Ciguayos (Cayabo or Maguana), and Marien (Bainoa). Many distinct Taíno languages also existed in this time period. There is still heated debate over the population of Taíno people on the island of Hispaniola in 1492, but estimates range upwards of 750,000.
Indigenous peoples in Colombia
Colombia's indigenous culture evolved from three main groups—the Quimbaya, who inhabited the western slopes of the Cordillera Central; the Chibchas; and the Kalina (Caribs). When the Spanish arrived in 1509, they found a flourishing and heterogeneous Amerindian population that numbered between 1.5 million and 2 million, belonged to several hundred tribes, and largely spoke mutually unintelligible dialects. The two most advanced cultures of Amerindian peoples at the time were the Muisca and Taironas, who belonged to the Chibcha group and were skilled in farming, mining, and metalcraft. The Muisca lived mainly in the present departments of Cundinamarca and Boyacá, where they had fled centuries earlier after raids by the warlike Caribs, some of whom eventually migrated to Caribbean islands near the end of the first millennium A.D. The Taironas, who were divided into two subgroups, lived in the Caribbean lowlands and the highlands of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta. The Muisca civilization was well organized into distinct provinces governed by communal land laws and powerful caciques, who reported to one of the two supreme leaders.