Tonala

The Tonala are the Tecuexe, a Chichimeca people of Los Altos de Jalisco and the country east of Guadalajara, whose chief town was Tonallan, the later Tonalá. They held river valleys where they grew maize and beans and cultivated agaves for pulque; tradition made them migrants from the Zacateco dispersion around La Quemada.

The Tecuexe were feared fighters, and the Mexica themselves avoided a pitched battle with them at Tepatitlán. Tonallan was ruled by a queen, Cihualpilli Tzpotzinco, from her palace on the Xitépec hill, and it was at a dinner in her palace that the Mixtón War broke out in 1540.

The rising united Tecuexe, Caxcan and Zacateco against the Spanish until its defeat in 1542, after which Tecuexe pueblos were absorbed into colonial New Galicia, their people still writing petitions in Nahuatl as late as 1611.