Cuitlatec

The Cuitlatec lived on the Pacific side of what is now Guerrero, along the Balsas River and the Costa Grande, a land the Nahuas called Cuitlatecapan. Their language is an isolate, and they called themselves aʔnelgái.

In the late Postclassic their main coastal town was Mexcaltepec, centre of a polity that included Acapulco among its subject towns. The Balsas communities were conquered by the Purépecha and most of the rest by the Aztecs, in whose wars they fought. They farmed maize, cotton and cacao and worshipped the sun and moon. After the Spanish came in 1521 their numbers fell rapidly, yet they resisted for more than sixty years.