Purepecha

The Purepecha were the people of the Michoacan highlands in western Mexico, farmers and fishermen of the Patzcuaro basin whom the Spanish called Tarascans. Their language is an isolate unrelated to Nahuatl. Around 1300 the chief Tariacuri began uniting the lakeside communities, and by his death about 1350 his lineage held the whole basin.

Later kings made Tzintzuntzan the capital of a tributary kingdom, and the realm reached the Pacific by 1460. It beat back an Aztec invasion in the 1470s. Tangaxuan II submitted to Spain in 1525, but Nuno de Guzman had him executed in 1530. The bishop Vasco de Quiroga then founded hospital towns for the Purepecha.