SELBR] THE ANCIENT ZAPOTEC COUNTRY 261 



certain contributions to the Mexicans in order to remain unmolested 

 by them. 



The settlement of the Mexicans in Uaxyacac is said to have occurred 

 under the rule of the elder Motecuhzoma ; that is, in the period 

 between about 14-10 and 1470 A. D. That would be about a hundred 

 years after the period in which, as Father Burgoa says, the Zapotecs 

 spread toward the south and began to conquer the fruitful coast strips 

 of Jahipa and Tehuantepec." The account which Father Burgoa 

 gives of this conquest, derived from the narratives of the Zapotecs, is 

 far from clear and its details are scarcely credible. The conquest is 

 said to have been made with the assistance of Mixtec allies. The Zapo- 

 tecs, it is said, met Mexican hosts there side by side with the Huave, 

 a tribe which had emigrated from the south and which at that time 

 inhabited the entire coast strip of that region, the fertile and produc- 

 tive territory of Tehuantepec being habitually used by the Mexicans 

 as a resting place and rendezvous for the expeditions sent out to con- 

 quer (luatemala. Tlie Zapotec king is said to have then held the 

 Mexican forces in check in a mountain fastness by the river of 

 Tehuantepec — only the Quiengola can be meant from the descrip- 

 tion — and to have done them so nnich harm that the Mexican king 

 (Burgoa still speaks onl}^ of Motecuhzoma) was obliged to consent to 

 a cessation of hostilities and an arrangement.^ 



This account, as has been said, is not at all authentic. It confuses 

 earlier events with later ones and recognizes, naturally, only the 

 glorious deeds of the Zapotecs. The settlement of the Pacific coast 

 strip must indeed have occurred a long time before the Mexicans 

 entered this territory ; for, as the most reliable sources unite in 

 stating, it was not until the time of Auitzotl, that is, at the very 

 end of the tifteenth century, that the Mexicans extended their 

 expeditions into this Pacific coast district, the Anauac Ayotlan, the 

 '* coast land of Ayotlan ", as the Mexicans called it. The advance 

 ppst of the Mexicans in Uaxyacac proljably afforded the rallying 

 point for these Mexican enterprises. The motive for these expedi- 

 tions was also without doubt commercial advancement. The mer- 

 chants bdasted of having alone set on foot and carried through these 

 exjoeditious.'' 



The operations began, it seems, with attacks upon the cities of 

 the Zapotec country proper, the Valle de Oaxaca. According to the 



" Burgoa, work cited, chap. 71 : Y de suerte se apociernron les Zapotecos de mSs de 

 300 afios a esta parte en su gentilidad, que llenaron todos los sitios a«omodados de 

 poblaciones ("So that more than .300 years ago the Zapotecs coiuiuered this country in 

 tlieir |)aganism, and filled all tlie convenient sites with towns"). Since Father Hurgoa 

 wrote about the middle of the seventeenth century, we may consider the middle of tlie 

 fourteentli century as the date of this conquest. 



'' Burgoa, work cited, chap. 72. 



" See i^ahagUD, v. !>, chap. 2. 



