Tlaxcallān

The Tlaxcallan were the ruling Nahua house of the Tlaxcalan polity in the Puebla-Tlaxcala valley. Their tradition remembers Culhuatecuhtli Quanex, under whom a Nahua group founded the hilltop city of Tepeticpac Texcallan. His line grew into a coalition of four altepeme, which united during the fourteenth century and shared power instead of crowning a single king.

Ringed by Aztec territory, Tlaxcala was never conquered: from the reign of Moctezuma I (1440-1469) the Triple Alliance fought it in flower wars to take sacrificial captives and imposed a trade embargo.

When Hernán Cortés arrived in 1519 the Tlaxcalans, after fierce fighting, took him as their ally and supplied most of the indigenous troops that besieged and destroyed Tenochtitlan in 1521, earning the polity a privileged allied status under Spanish rule.