This article explores the general systems of identification and models of classification of nature and the human environment elaborated among the black population of the Viceroyalty of Nueva Granada during the 18th and early 19th centuries. Based on the few annotations on this topic in colonial documentation, and checking them against a longstanding oral tradition and references obtained among present-day ethnic communities, it became clear that despite the disdain of elite groups, said knowledge not only formed part of their intellectual and scientific production, but also paved the way for establishing identities, properties and interactions among all the entities that composed the cosmos around them. They thus created their own frameworks of meaning from which they developed new forms of thought and everyday action that added new dimensions to the reality that tried to impose itself on them as the only version possible.