Chinda

Chinda lies on the left bank of the Ulúa River in the Chinda Valley of western Honduras, where the river runs between wooded hills. Maya and Lenca peoples had lived in these valleys before the Spanish conquest, cultivating maize and cacao on the river terraces. The settlement appears in colonial records by the late seventeenth century as a village of the valley, and by 1791 it was counted under the parish of Petoa. The surrounding hills kept scattered homesteads and small villages rather than one dense town.