The Chitarero were an indigenous Chibcha-speaking people in the Andes of north-eastern Colombia and north-western Venezuela. They were responsible for the death of the German conquistador Ambrosius Ehinger in 1533 by means of poisoned arrows. They were called "Chitareros" by the Spanish, because of the general custom that the men had to carry hanging from the waist a calabazo or totumo (calabash gourds) with maize wine or chicha as the Spanish called it. Asking what the thing they carried was called, the natives responded that it was a chitarero.