Ikoot

The Ikoot, better known as the Huave, call themselves Ikoots, meaning “us”, and have occupied the Pacific sandspits and lagoons of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec in Oaxaca for more than three thousand years, longer there than the Zapotecs. Their villages, above all San Mateo del Mar, live from fishing and salt-making, trading marine products with inland towns. Their language, ombeayiüts or “our language”, is generally treated as an isolate with no proven relatives.

In the Post-Classic period the expanding Zapotec kingdom of Zaachila, ruling from Guiengola fortress, confined the Ikoot to narrow coastal strips, seizing the isthmus salt pans and the trade road toward Soconusco.

When the Spanish reached the isthmus in 1523, the Zapotec ruler of Tehuantepec submitted to the crown, and the Ikoot villages passed under colonial rule with the rest of the coast.