Chorti

The Chorti are Maya of the Guatemala-Honduras-El Salvador borderlands, their speech the closest living relative of the Classic Maya of Copan's stelae. Copan was their ancestral city: founded in 426 by king Yax K'uk' Mo', its dynasty ruled nearly four hundred years, making the valley a centre of Maya sculpture, astronomy and writing.

After the Classic collapse they stayed in the hill country, forming a confederacy called the Payaki kingdom on the eve of the Spanish invasion. Leader Copan Galel resisted the conquistadors near Copan's ruins and then at Citala, where defeat forced his surrender and baptism.

Under colonial rule their territory shrank to farming villages in Chiquimula and the Honduran highlands, with a few communities around Tejutla in El Salvador keeping Chorti ancestry. Their old religion honoured earth and wind gods, and music and maize customs survived in former Payaki villages.