Tutunakú

The Tutunakú, or Totonacs, are the people of Totonacapan, the Gulf-facing lowlands of Veracruz and the adjoining Sierra Norte of Puebla, whose language forms with Tepehua a small family unrelated to the other tongues of Mesoamerica.

They are the likely builders of El Tajín, the Classic Veracruz city that flourished from 600 to 1200 and had a Pyramid of the Niches. Fire and invasion, probably by Chichimecs, destroyed it in the early thirteenth century, after which Papantla became their leading town.

When Cortés landed in 1519 Cempoala was the first native city he entered, and its Totonac rulers became his first allies, joining the march on Tenochtitlan. The region then passed under Spanish rule with little fighting; through the colonial centuries Papantla vanilla, regulated by local ordinances in 1743 and 1767, made them the chief vanilla growers of the Atlantic world.