Tzompanco

Tzompanco was a Coixca town in the Sierra Madre del Sur of Guerrero. Its Nahuatl name referred to the tzompantli skull rack, and its people spoke Nahuatl.

Under Ahuitzotl, the Aztecs made Tzompanco the seat of a strategic province paying gold dust and war captives. Its merchants exchanged maize and turkeys on the Pacific coast for cacao. Francisco de Hoyos discovered silver here in 1531; colonial mines used Indigenous slave labour until 1550, and most were abandoned by 1582.