Purepecha

The Purépecha are the Indigenous people of the Michoacán highlands of western Mexico, farmers and fishermen of Pátzcuaro basin, whom the Spanish called Tarascans from a word meaning in-law. Their Purépecha language is an isolate unrelated to Nahuatl or the other tongues of Mesoamerica. Purépecha artisans worked copper and bronze into tools and crafted feather mosaics of hummingbird plumage.

Around 1300 the chief Tariácuri began uniting the rival communities of the Pátzcuaro basin; by his death around 1350 his lineage held the whole basin. Later kings made Tzintzuntzan capital of a tributary kingdom, and in 1460 the realm reached the Pacific. Its defining struggle was with the Aztec Empire: invasion in the 1470s was beaten back, and the Aztecs never conquered its lands.

When smallpox and news of the fall of Tenochtitlan reached Michoacán, Tangaxuan II submitted to Spain in 1525, but Nuño de Guzmán invaded in 1530, sacked the kingdom and executed its king, after which Vasco de Quiroga built colonial order from 1533.