Tz'utujil

The Tz'utujil were a Maya people of the southern shore of Lake Atitlán in the Guatemalan highlands. Their capital Chiaa stood on the fortified hill of Chuitinamit, where the supreme lord and nobles ran cacao plantations.

In the fifteenth century the K'iche' king K'iq'ab checked their expansion. In 1524 Pedro de Alvarado and his Kaqchikel allies defeated them near Panajachel. Franciscans moved the capital to Santiago Atitlán; disease and mine labour reduced the population from seventy-two thousand in 1520 to about fifty-six hundred by 1550.