Zacatlan

Zacatlan was a mountain polity in the Sierra Norte de Puebla. Its Nahuatl name meant a place of abundant grass; after the Toltec collapse it became an independent province.

In the fifteenth century Texcoco's Colhua lords incorporated Zacatlan into the Aztec Empire, and much of the Sierra Norte became the province of Zacatlan, whose towns fought Tlaxcala. Spanish expeditions arrived in 1519 and 1520. During the independence war Francisco Osorno seized Zacatlan as his base in 1811; in 1824 it became a department of Puebla state.