Tepecan

The Tepecan were a small Tepiman-speaking people of the Bolaños River canyon in northern Jalisco, centred on the village of Azqueltán. Their ancestors were Tepehuán who migrated south from the drought-stricken Sierra Madre Occidental in the thirteenth or fourteenth century and settled the isolated gorge, keeping a dialect closest to Southern Tepehuán.

Spaniards reached the canyon in 1534, and during the eighteenth century Tepehuán lands around Azqueltán passed to Spanish ranchers and Tlaxcaltec colonists; the village's isolation let the Tepecan keep their language and identity long after neighbouring settlements lost theirs.