Metztitlan

Metztitlan was an independent Otomi kingdom centred on a town in the mountain-ringed lake country of present-day Hidalgo. Its Nahuatl name meant place of the moon; its people worshipped the moon goddess Zana.

Mexica armies repeatedly entered its valley, but the Aztec Empire never conquered it. Metztitlan joined Hernan Cortes against Tenochtitlan. Augustinian friars founded a monastery in 1538 and rebuilt it on higher ground as the church of the Santos Reyes in 1557. Indigenous uprisings shook the town twice in 1811 during Mexico's independence war.