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Cueva people

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The Cueva were an indigenous people that lived in the Darién region of eastern Panamá. They were completely exterminated between 1510 and 1535 due to Spanish colonization.

The Darién region formerly occupied by the Cueva became populated by the Kuna after their westward expansion during the 17th and 18th centuries. A vocabulary of the Kuna mistakenly identified as Cueva has led to the confusion of the Kuna with the Cueva where some authors report that the Cueva are related to or are ancestors of the Kuna (Adelaar & Muysken 2004: 62). The Kuna language and culture are very different from the Cueva.

Language

Loewen (1963) and Constenla Umaña & Margery Peña (1991) have suggested a connection between the Cueva language and the Chocoan family. More speculative proposals include Cueva under the Chibchan family.

As mentioned above, in 1968 Čestmír Loukotka erroneously treated a Cuna vocabulary as a sample of the Cueva language. This error has been repeated in subsequent works (e.g. Greenberg 1987, Whitehead 1999).

See also

Bibliography

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