Me'phaa

The Me'phaa, called Tlapanecs in Nahuatl after their mountain capital of Tlapan, are an Oto-Manguean people of the rugged Costa Chica ranges of Guerrero, east of Acapulco. Early in the second millennium a branch moved toward the coast, becoming known as the Yopi, who built the kingdom of Yopitzinco while their northern kin held Tlapa.

Both groups were bowmen whose broken terrain no Aztec army could subdue. Yopitzinco remained an independent enclave on the Mexica southern frontier, at times routing Mexica garrisons, even though its lords were invited to the coronation festivals of Tenochtitlan, where they were known as goldworkers and worshippers of Xipe Totec.

Spanish rule brought epidemics, and in 1531 the Yopi rose in rebellion from Cuautepec; royal troops crushed it, the survivors withdrew into the mountains, and the Yopi name faded while the Me'phaa language and identity persisted through the colonial centuries.