Totorame

The Totorame were a settled coastal people of the Pacific lowlands, holding the shore and river valleys from the Piaxtla River in Sinaloa south to the Santiago River in Nayarit. Their chief seat was the lordship of Chiametla, near Chametla. Their Pirome speech belonged to the Cora branch of the Uto-Aztecan family.

They farmed maize, beans and chile, wove cotton mantles, and lived from the sea, taking fish and shrimp with weirs and gathering shellfish and salt to trade. Inland they bordered the Tepehuán and Cora and fended off raids on their harvests by the Xixime and Acaxee.

Nuño Beltrán de Guzmán's expedition overran Chiametla in the early 1530s. A Spanish villa founded there in 1531 was abandoned by 1536 under native attack; in 1565 Francisco de Ibarra pacified the coast, refounded Chametla and opened the silver mines of Copala and Maloya.