Yoko t'aanob

The Yoko t'aanob, called the Chontal Maya of Tabasco, are also called the Putun in older chronicles; the name Chontal comes from the Nahuatl word for foreigner. They live in the lagoon-and-river lowlands of Tabasco, once cradle of the Olmecs and later a Maya heartland.

In the Terminal Classic their canoe-borne merchants dominated the river and coastal trade of the Maya lowlands, their homeland neutral ground for merchants of rival powers. On the eve of the conquest they were divided into six provinces, among them Potonchan and Xicalango, Potonchan and Jalapa holding perhaps thirteen thousand people each; cacao, fish and maize made it rich.

The Spanish arrived in 1518 with Juan de Grijalva's voyage, and in 1519 Hernan Cortes met the chief Tabscoob, whose people became the first in New Spain to acknowledge the Spanish emperor and gave Cortes the interpreter La Malinche. Colonial epidemics and ranching emptied most old towns; Nacajuca, where the first church rose in 1614, was the only urban centre to survive the period.