Kuskatan

Kuskatan, called Cuzcatlán by the Spanish, was the Nahua-Pipil lordship that held most of western and central El Salvador, some 10,000 square kilometres divided into seventy-two tributary provinces. Maize was its main crop, cacao grew around Sonsonate and Ahuachapán, and the coast and Lake Ilopango supplied salt and fish. Excavations beside a lagoon that later dried up show the plaza, ceremonial mounds and dwellings of its capital. No Pipil writings survive, and the lordship's early rulers are known only from the accounts of colonial writers.

From the mid-fifteenth century the lordship's expansion brought war with the K'iche' and Kaqchikel of Guatemala; it ended around 1501 with a treaty that made them allies. A smallpox epidemic in 1520 cut the population by half. Pedro de Alvarado fought his way to the capital in June 1524 but could not hold it and left in July. Diego de Alvarado completed the conquest in 1528 and refounded San Salvador at Ciudad Vieja.