Saraguro people
indigenous tribe in South America
The Saraguro is a people of the Kichwa nation most of whom live in Saraguro Canton in the Loja Province of Ecuador. Although most now speak Spanish, Runashimi or Kichwa, a Quechua dialect, is also spoken and language revitalization efforts are being implemented. Likewise, the Saraguro have retained much of their land, customs and traditional dress. According to the INEC's 2010 population census, the total population of Saraguro canton is 30,183, but that total includes both the Indigenous and non-Indigenous people living in Saraguro.
The Saraguro may be the descendants of people re-settled from distant regions in the Inca Empire in the 15th and early 16th century.
Origins
In the 1460s the Inca empire conquered the Saraguro area. The pre-Inca people may have been the barely-known Palta or the Cañari. The ancestors of the modern-day Saraguro people, according to oral traditions, were moved to Saraguro by the Incas from other areas, possibly the Colla or other people from the Lake Titicaca and Cuzco regions. The Incas had a policy of forcibly moving people from one region of the empire to another, thereby diversifying the population and dispersing possible opposition to their rule. The resettlement policy was called mitma.
The public source identifies “Saraguro people” as indigenous tribe in South America. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Saraguro, people and indigenous.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 28, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1783660. Authority coordinates are -3.622, -79.240. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2010.
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This entry incorporates text from “Saraguro people” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.