Ñuu Savi

Ñuu Savi, the land of rain, is the Mixtecs' name for their land and people; the Nahuatl called them Mixtecs, the cloud people. Their homeland La Mixteca spans the mountains and Pacific coast of western Oaxaca and neighboring Puebla and Guerrero, their urban civilization reaching back to about 1500 BCE, with highland capitals Tilantongo and Tlaxiaco. They were the foremost goldsmiths of Mesoamerica, casting gold by the lost-wax method and recording royal genealogies in painted deerskin codices.

Those codices tell how Lord Eight Deer Jaguar Claw of Tilantongo founded the coastal capital of Tututepec in 1083 and united a score of towns; by the sixteenth century it ruled more than 25,000 square kilometers. The Aztecs overran the highlands in 1458 and built the fort of Huaxyácac in 1486 to collect tribute, but Tututepec held out.

In 1522 Pedro de Alvarado, helped by Zapotecs of Tehuantepec, stormed Tututepec and took its lord Coaxintecuhtli. Under Spanish rule native cabildos and codex-style documents long survived.