Tuxpan

Tuxpan was a Huastec town near the mouth of the namesake river on Mexico's Gulf coast. Its Nahuatl name Tochpan meant place of rabbits; a market held every twenty days drew merchants from the Valley of Mexico and Tulancingo.

Around 1450 Moctezuma I's armies defeated the Huastecs, and Tochpan became the seat of an Aztec tributary province that included Papantla and sent clothing, jade and featherwork to Tenochtitlan. It retained considerable autonomy until the Spanish conquest of the Huasteca between 1519 and the 1530s, after which many inhabitants were enslaved and shipped to the Caribbean.