This article describes the warfare of the Muisca. The Muisca inhabited the Tenza and Ubaque valleys and the Altiplano Cundiboyacense, the high plateau of the Colombian Eastern Ranges of the Andes in the time before the Spanish conquest. Their society was mainly egalitarian with little difference between the elite class (caciques) and the general people. The Muisca economy was based on agriculture and trading raw materials like cotton, coca, feathers, sea snails and gold with their neighbours. Called "Salt People", they extracted salt from brines in Zipaquirá, Nemocón and Tausa to use for their cuisine and as trading material.

Being mostly traders and farmers, the Muisca also had a structure of combatants, called guecha warriors. Between the northern and southern parts of the Muisca Confederation, battles were fought where the zipa, ruling over the Bogotá savanna in the south and the zaque of Hunza in the north contested for control over terrains. The leaders of the communities fought with their warriors. The main enemy of the Muisca were the Panche people who inhabited the area to the west of the Altiplano in the hills leading to the Magdalena River. Fortifications of guecha warriors, a privileged class in their society, were built in the border region with the Panche. The guecha warriors were armed with blowpipes, spears, clubs, and slings; and defended themselves with long shields and thick multi-layered cotton mantles. Battles in the history of the Muisca are described around Chocontá (~1490) and Pasca around 1470. When the Spanish conquistadors entered the Muisca Confederation in March 1537 after a long, deadly and sterunous expedition from Santa Marta at the Caribbean coast, they found little resistance of the Muisca, except in later battles against the Tundama ruling over the northernmost area around Duitama. The Spanish who already had conquered the Muisca and founded Bogotá, used the guecha warriors to submit the Panche in the Battle of Tocarema on August 20, 1538.

Knowledge about the Muisca warfare has been provided by the conquistadors who made first contact with the Muisca; Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada, his brother Hernán, Juan de San Martín and Antonio de Lebrija. Later scholars were Juan de Castellanos, Pedro Simón and Lucas Fernández de Piedrahita. Modern anthropological research has revised some of the accounts of the early chroniclers on the war-like status of the Muisca, who were even by the conquistadors considered more traders and negotiators than fighters.

In the ages before the Spanish conquest of the Muisca, the high central plains of the Eastern Ranges of the Colombian Andes was inhabited by the Muisca. They established a rather egalitarian society of small settlements dotted across the valleys and flatlands in the mountains, based mainly on agriculture, trade and the extraction of salt, which gave them the name "The Salt People". The Altiplano Cundiboyacense and neighbouring Ubaque and Tenza Valleys to the east the inhabited was very much isolated from the coast of later Colombia, but via trade routes and many markets held frequently, they were connected with their neighbouring indigenous groups; to the west and northwest the Panche, Muzo and Yarigui people, to the north the Guane, Lache and U'wa, in the eastern part towards the vast flatlands of the Llanos Orientales the Achagua, Guayupe and Tegua people and to the south in the mountains of Sumapaz the Sutagao.

The Muisca spoke Chibcha, or in their own language called Muysccubun; "language of the people", and traded with their neighbours raw products to establish a self-sufficient economy where surpluses were traded for cotton, gold, emeralds, feathers, bee wax (for the fine goldworking of their tunjo offer pieces) and tropical fruits not growing on the high plains. The people were very religious and honoured their two main deities Sué, the Sun, and Chía, his wife; the Moon in their Sun and Moon temples in Sugamuxi and Chía respectively. Each small settlement of maximum 100 bohíos was headed by a cacique and the major towns of Bacatá and Hunza were ruled by the zipa and zaque. The Sacred City of the Sun Sugamuxi was ruled by a priest, called iraca and the northernmost area headed by the Tundama based in the hills around the former lake of Duitama.

The initiation ritual of the new zipa took place in their sacred Lake Guatavita where he would cover himself in gold dust and jump from a raft in the waters of the circular lake at 3,000 metres (9,800 ft) altitude, a ritual represented in the famous Muisca raft. It was this "Man of Gold" that formed the basis for the myth of El Dorado, known far outside of the Muisca Confederation, as their loose collection of rulers was called. This legend formed the main goal for the Spanish conquest that took the conquistadors more than a year into the Andes, from Santa Marta, where they left in early April 1536.

Although early descriptions by Spanish chroniclers narrate about warfare, later revision of earlier beliefs has revealed that the Muisca were more a community of traders than warriors. Still, all researchers agree that the Muisca people had special classes in their society reserved for their warriors and that battles were fought mainly defending their terrain against the Panche in the west and southwest and between each other; the battles between the zipa and zaque. The Chibcha word for "war" or "enemy" is saba.

For the etymology of the word güecha various hypotheses have been presented. According to Pedro Simón, guecha meant "brave", while Ezequiel Uricoechea signals its derivation from zuecha, meaning "uncle"; "brother of the mother". The lineage of heritage in the Muisca society was maternal. Uricoechea described the term as a combination of gue- ("village") and cha, which means "man" or "male"; "man of the village". The name guecha has been changed in modern Colombian Spanish as guache, meaning "uncivilised", "brute".