page_title: Baltasar Maldonado
section_title: Spanish conquest
hierarchical_section_title: Baltasar Maldonado / Spanish conquest
caption_attribution_description: Description: Armenia, Departamento de Quindio, Colombia Source: Louise Wolff (darina), March 2005
context_page_description: Baltasar Maldonado, also written as Baltazar Maldonado, was a Spanish conquistador who first served under Sebastian de Belalcázar in the conquest of Quito and Peru, the foundations of Cali and Popayán, and later in the army of Hernán Pérez de Quesada in the Spanish conquest of the Muisca.
  Baltasar Maldonado is known as the conquistador who defeated the last ruling main cacique of the Muisca: Tundama, whom he killed with a large hammer in late December 1539. Subsequently, Baltasar Maldonado took part in the Quest for El Dorado led by Hernán Pérez de Quesada in the southern regions of present-day Colombia. After this failed expedition, where many of the Spanish soldiers died of diseases, poisoned arrows and drowning in the numerous rivers of the Llanos Orientales and western Amazon River basin, Baltasar Maldonado returned to Popayán and Cali and traveled back to Bogotá, the capital of the New Kingdom of Granada where he died in 1552.
  The adventures of Baltasar Maldonado during the first half of the 16th century have been described by scholars Juan de Castellanos and Juan Rodríguez Freyle in his work El Carnero.
context_section_description: Baltasar Maldonado traveled from Spain to Santo Domingo and later to Santa Marta. He was a soldier in the conquest expedition of Sebastián de Belalcázar who founded San Francisco de Quito on December 6, 1534, and Peru and was sent northwards into the later New Kingdom of Granada with his later brother-in-law Jorge Robledo and Álvaro de Mendoza. They reached the central part of the Central Ranges of the Colombian Andes in 1539, where the troops encountered resistance of the Pijao, Quimbaya and other indigenous groups.
  He accompanied De Belalcázar on his journey from Popayán, founded on January 13, 1537, towards the Bogotá savanna in the Eastern Ranges where the conquistadors encountered the other two groups; the eastern expedition led by Nikolaus Federmann and the main expedition under command of Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada. After the foundation of Bogotá on August 6, 1538, the soldiers participated in the Battle of Tocarema two weeks later to submit the Panche to the west of the Altiplano Cundiboyacense. During this time, Baltasar Maldonado was involved in the conquest of the Central Ranges, and sent east by Jorge Robledo to the Muisca Confederation on the Altiplano.
caption: Before reaching the Muisca Confederation, Baltasar Maldonado was active in the conquest of Quito, Popayán and the Central Ranges of the Colombian Andes, terrain of the Pijao and Quimbaya
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