The Mixtecs in ancient and colonial times

Abstract

This book is a regional ethnohistory of the Mixteca Alta of Oaxaca, Mexico, and the people who lived there between 1520 B.C. and A.D. 1820. When the Spaniards arrived in south-central Mexico in the early sixteenth century, they entered a region of northwestern Oaxaca known to its inhabitants as Nu Nudzahui and to the Nahuatl-speaking Aztecs as Mixtlan, "Place of Clouds." To the Spaniards the region came to be known as La Mixteca. Hundreds of thousands of Mixtec-speakers resided in three major geographical zones of western Oaxaca. The Spanish colonists designated these regions as the Mixteca Baja (Nuiñe) in the north and northwest, the Mixteca Alta (Nu Dzahui Nuhu) in the mountainous central area, and the Mixteca de la Costa (Nundehui) in the southwest and south. By far the richest and most populous of the three regions was Ñu Dzahui Nuhu, the Mixteca Alta. It was there that the Spaniards, recognizing the richness, resources, and potential economic value of the area, concentrated their greatest efforts at settlement, economic exploi-tation, and religious conversion. [CLCDT.8.1.19]