The Otavalos are an indigenous people native to the Andean mountains of Imbabura Province in northern Ecuador. The Otavalos also inhabit the city of Otavalo in that province. Commerce and handcrafts are among the principal economic activities of the Otavalos, who enjoy a higher standard of living than most indigenous groups in Ecuador and many mestizos of their area. The Otavalo live in the high, cool altitudes of the Andes. The city of Otavalo is located at an elevation of . History Prior to the incorporation of the Otavalo people into the Inca Empire in the late 15th or early 16th century, the region north of Quito near the border of present-day Colombia, an area long by the same width, consisted of several small-scale chiefdoms including the Otavalo, Caranqui, Cayambe, and Cochasquí. These chiefdoms appear to have been similar in artistic techniques, subsistence, settlement patterns, and language, probably all speaking Barbacoan languages. The four chiefdoms collectively had an estimated pre-Inca population of 100,000 to 180,000. The Otavalo and other Andean people of northern Ecuador are often identified with the pre-Columbian Cara people and Cara culture and as descendants of the semi-mythical Quitu culture, whence comes the name of the Ecuadorian capital of Quito. The Otavalo area was densely populated. The Otavalo people practiced irrigation agriculture and constructed camelones or Waru Waru raised fields to regulate the supply of water for crops. Maize, potatoes and, at lower and warmer altitudes, coca and other tropical and sub-tropical crops were important products. Domesticated guinea pigs were an important source of animal protein, as was wild game such as deer. Prior to the Incas, the Otavalo apparently did not possess domesticated llamas and alpacas as did Andean peoples further south in Peru and Bolivia. The brief period of Inca rule apparently did not change Otavalo culture much. Contrary to Incan practice, few if any mitma (people forcibly resettled outside their homelands by the Incas) were moved into the Otavalo region. Also contrary to the Incas who used the vertical archipelago to exchange goods among regions, a class of long-range traders called mindaláes continued to operate among the Otavalo. The mindaláes appear to have operated outside the authority of the chiefdoms. They carried on trade with the people living in lower elevations on the western slopes of the Andes, especially in the Mira River valley, about north of the city of Otavalo. Products they brought