Tlaxcaltec

The Tlaxcaltecs are a Nahua people of the Puebla–Tlaxcala Valley, east of the Valley of Mexico. Their ancestors counted themselves among the seven Nahuatlaca tribes that tradition says came out of Chicomoztoc. After a failed settlement at Poyauhtlan on Lake Texcoco around 1290, they moved east into the valley later named Tlaxcala, absorbing Otomi and Pinome villagers.

By the fourteenth century they had built Tlaxcallan, a confederation of four altepetl ruled by a council of four lords. Surrounded by the Mexica Triple Alliance, Tlaxcala kept its independence through more than sixty years of trade blockade and repeated flower wars. In 1519 it allied with Hernán Cortés and supplied the largest indigenous contingent in the 1521 conquest of Tenochtitlan.

The crown rewarded it with tax exemption and direct royal jurisdiction. From 1591 Tlaxcaltec families were sent north as model colonists among the Chichimecas, founding towns.