This article explores the changing meaning of Indianness during the long independence era. Focusing on six towns around Santa Marta, it discusses why these were considered Indian in the late colonial period, why they supported the royalist cause during the Independence struggles and how their inhabitants ceased to be identified as Indians within a few decades of republican rule. While recent subaltern studies have emphasised Indian resistance against the liberal, republican states formed in early nineteenth-century Latin America, here it is argued that some former Indian communities opted for inclusion into the republic as non-Indian citizens.