As the Guanes the largest indigenous group that inhabited the present department of Santander, the article explores the territoriality and settlement during the second half of the sixteenth century from visits to the Guane Province in the years 1560 and 1572. The analysis of measures of visit for the years 1560 and 1572 as well as the testimonies of chroniclers as Castellanos, Fernández de Oviedo and Fray Pedro Simon can recognize the territorial environment of this town from a heuristic study to the scarce literature for the subject. From this perspective, some analytical habitation patterns of Guanes, the tax regime on the parcel tribute to this subject population, and the range of products traded with neighboring populations were identified. The traumatic subjugation of this people coupled with epidemics and rapid mixing does not reveal in depth aspects of this ethnic group, including items such as its economy, its habitat and its forms of organization.