Zain

Zaín was an Indigenous settlement in the northern Zacatecas highlands, near the Aguanaval River. Accounts distinguish an upper settlement in the mountains from a lower one by the river; the former became known as Saín Alto. The people of Zaín belonged to a region of Zacateco communities whose lands lay along the expanding northern frontier of New Spain. Spanish explorers Ginés Vázquez de Mercado and Francisco de Ibarra encountered them in the early 1550s, as expeditions pushed beyond the newly established mines of Zacatecas.