Amuzgo

The Amuzgos are an Oto-Manguean people of the Yacuyagua mountains on the Guerrero-Oaxaca border, around Xochistlahuaca and Ometepec, whose speech belongs to the Mixtec branch and whose names include Tzjon Noan, people of the thread.

They once held the Costa Chica down to the Pacific, but Mixtec expansion drove them into the highlands: around 1100 their capital Xochistlahuaca was subjugated, and for three centuries they paid tribute in cotton, cloth and gold as part of the Mixtec province of Ayacastla. The Aztecs took Ayacastla in 1457 but never mastered the Amuzgo country, and revolts in 1494 and 1504 to 1507 were put down by force.

Pedro de Alvarado's men conquered the region in 1522; war, disease and overwork cut Xochistlahuaca's people from some 20,000 to 200 by 1582, and survivors retreated into the Sierra Madre del Sur, where their backstrap-loom textiles and language survived the colonial centuries.