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The Huastec or Téenek (contraction of ''Te' Inik'', "people from here"; also known as Huaxtec, Wastek or Huastecos) are an
indigenous people of Mexico Indigenous peoples of Mexico ( es, gente indígena de México, pueblos indígenas de México), Native Mexicans ( es, nativos mexicanos) or Mexican Native Americans ( es, pueblos originarios de México, lit=Original peoples of Mexico), are those ...
, living in the La Huasteca region including the
state State may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Literature * ''State Magazine'', a monthly magazine published by the U.S. Department of State * ''The State'' (newspaper), a daily newspaper in Columbia, South Carolina, United States * ''Our S ...
s of Hidalgo,
Veracruz Veracruz (), formally Veracruz de Ignacio de la Llave (), officially the Free and Sovereign State of Veracruz de Ignacio de la Llave ( es, Estado Libre y Soberano de Veracruz de Ignacio de la Llave), is one of the 31 states which, along with Me ...
,
San Luis Potosí San Luis Potosí (), officially the Free and Sovereign State of San Luis Potosí ( es, Estado Libre y Soberano de San Luis Potosí), is one of the 32 states which compose the Federal Entities of Mexico. It is divided in 58 municipalities and i ...
and
Tamaulipas Tamaulipas (), officially the Free and Sovereign State of Tamaulipas ( es, Estado Libre y Soberano de Tamaulipas), is a state in the northeast region of Mexico; one of the 31 states which, along with Mexico City, comprise the 32 Federal Entiti ...
concentrated along the route of the
Pánuco River The Pánuco River ( es, Río Pánuco, ), also known as the ''Río de Canoas'', is a river in Mexico fed by several tributaries including the Moctezuma River and emptying into the Gulf of Mexico. The river is approximately long and passes throu ...
and along the coast of the
Gulf of Mexico The Gulf of Mexico ( es, Golfo de México) is an ocean basin and a marginal sea of the Atlantic Ocean, largely surrounded by the North American continent. It is bounded on the northeast, north and northwest by the Gulf Coast of the United ...
. There are approximately 66,000 Huastec speakers today, of which two-thirds are in
San Luis Potosí San Luis Potosí (), officially the Free and Sovereign State of San Luis Potosí ( es, Estado Libre y Soberano de San Luis Potosí), is one of the 32 states which compose the Federal Entities of Mexico. It is divided in 58 municipalities and i ...
and one-third in
Veracruz Veracruz (), formally Veracruz de Ignacio de la Llave (), officially the Free and Sovereign State of Veracruz de Ignacio de la Llave ( es, Estado Libre y Soberano de Veracruz de Ignacio de la Llave), is one of the 31 states which, along with Me ...
, although their population was probably much higher, as much as half a million, when the Spanish arrived in 1529. The ancient
Huastec civilization The Huastec civilization (sometimes spelled Huaxtec or Wastek) was a pre-Columbian civilization of Mesoamerica, occupying a territory on the Gulf coast of Mexico that included the northern portion of Veracruz state, and neighbouring regions of th ...
is one of the
pre-Columbian In the history of the Americas, the pre-Columbian era spans from the original settlement of North and South America in the Upper Paleolithic period through European colonization, which began with Christopher Columbus's voyage of 1492. Usually, ...
Mesoamerica Mesoamerica is a historical region and cultural area in southern North America and most of Central America. It extends from approximately central Mexico through Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and northern Costa Rica. Wit ...
n cultures. Judging from archaeological remains, they are thought to date back to approximately the 10th century BCE, although their most productive period of civilization is usually considered to be the Postclassic era between the fall of
Teotihuacan Teotihuacan ( Spanish: ''Teotihuacán'') (; ) is an ancient Mesoamerican city located in a sub-valley of the Valley of Mexico, which is located in the State of Mexico, northeast of modern-day Mexico City. Teotihuacan is known today as ...
and the rise of the
Aztec The Aztecs () were a Mesoamerican culture that flourished in central Mexico in the post-classic period from 1300 to 1521. The Aztec people included different ethnic groups of central Mexico, particularly those groups who spoke the Nahuatl ...
Empire. The Pre-Columbian Huastecs constructed
temple A temple (from the Latin ) is a building reserved for spiritual rituals and activities such as prayer and sacrifice. Religions which erect temples include Christianity (whose temples are typically called churches), Hinduism (whose temples ...
s on step-pyramids, carved independently standing sculptures, and produced elaborately painted pottery. They were admired for their abilities as musicians by other
Mesoamerica Mesoamerica is a historical region and cultural area in southern North America and most of Central America. It extends from approximately central Mexico through Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and northern Costa Rica. Wit ...
n peoples. About 1450, the Huastecs were defeated by Aztec armies under the leadership of
Moctezuma I Moctezuma I (–1469), also known as Moteuczomatzin Ilhuicamina (), Huehuemoteuczoma or Montezuma I ( nci, Motēuczōma Ilhuicamīna , nci, Huēhuemotēuczōma ), was the second Aztec emperor and fifth king of Tenochtitlan. During his reign, t ...
; the Huastecs henceforth paid tribute to the Aztec Empire but retained a large degree of local self-government. The Huastecs were conquered by the
Spanish Spanish might refer to: * Items from or related to Spain: **Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain **Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries **Spanish cuisine Other places * Spanish, Ontario, Can ...
between 1519 and the 1530s. After the Spanish Conquest, many Huastecs were sold as slaves in the Caribbean by the Spanish. The first grammatical and lexical description of the Huastec language accessible to Europeans was by Fray
Andrés de Olmos Andrés de Olmos (c.1485 – 8 October 1571) was a Spanish Franciscan priest and grammarian and ethno-historian of Mexico's indigenous languages and peoples. He was born in Oña, Burgos, Spain and died in Tampico in New Spain (modern-day Ta ...
, who also wrote the first such grammars of
Nahuatl Nahuatl (; ), Aztec, or Mexicano is a language or, by some definitions, a group of languages of the Uto-Aztecan language family. Varieties of Nahuatl are spoken by about Nahua peoples, most of whom live mainly in Central Mexico and have small ...
and
Totonac The Totonac are an indigenous people of Mexico who reside in the states of Veracruz, Puebla, and Hidalgo. They are one of the possible builders of the pre-Columbian city of El Tajín, and further maintained quarters in Teotihuacán (a city ...
.


Migration history


Splitting from the rest of the Maya

Studies of language change, especially
glottochronology Glottochronology (from Attic Greek γλῶττα ''tongue, language'' and χρόνος ''time'') is the part of lexicostatistics which involves comparative linguistics and deals with the chronological relationship between languages.Sheila Embleton ...
(that is, words changing in form or being replaced by borrowed synonyms), have given linguists the tools to estimate the point in time when many pairs of languages diverged from their common ancestral tongue. The procedure depends on the assumption that languages change, in the absence of widespread literacy, at a constant rate. Of all the languages descended from Proto-Mayan, the proto-Huastecan language was the first to split from Mayan proper. The second split, in the non-Huastecan main branch, was between proto-Yucatecan, now spoken across the
Yucatán Peninsula The Yucatán Peninsula (, also , ; es, Península de Yucatán ) is a large peninsula in southeastern Mexico and adjacent portions of Belize and Guatemala. The peninsula extends towards the northeast, separating the Gulf of Mexico to the north ...
, and the ancestors of all other Maya languages. The only other language, besides Huastec, which arose from proto-Huastecan was Chicomuceltec (also called Cotoque), a language once spoken in
Chiapas Chiapas (; Tzotzil and Tzeltal: ''Chyapas'' ), officially the Free and Sovereign State of Chiapas ( es, Estado Libre y Soberano de Chiapas), is one of the states that make up the 32 federal entities of Mexico. It comprises 124 municipalities ...
near
Comitán Comitán (; formally: Comitán de Domínguez, for Belisario DomínguezComitán de D ...
, but now extinct. Linguists have approximated that the precursor to the language of the Huastecs diverged from the Proto-Mayan language between 2200 and 1200 BCE. Linguist
Morris Swadesh Morris Swadesh (; January 22, 1909 – July 20, 1967) was an American linguist who specialized in comparative and historical linguistics. Swadesh was born in Massachusetts to Bessarabian Jewish immigrant parents. He completed bachelor's and ma ...
posited the later date as the latest possible time for this split to have occurred, and gave the Huastec/ Chicomuceltec ''inik'' ("man") versus other-Maya ''winik'' as a typical contrast. McQuown suggests 1500 BCE, Manrique Castaneda 1800 BCE, and Dahlin 2100 BCE as the most likely dates for the split. Kaufman's proposed date of about 2200 BCE would require two regular phonological (sound) changes that are attested in all Maya languages, "r" changing to "y" and "q" to "k", to have happened independently after the split, in both the Huastec/Chicomuceltec branch and in the branch of all other
Mayan languages The Mayan languagesIn linguistics, it is conventional to use ''Mayan'' when referring to the languages, or an aspect of a language. In other academic fields, ''Maya'' is the preferred usage, serving as both a singular and plural noun, and as ...
. Robertson's work on verb
affix In linguistics, an affix is a morpheme that is attached to a word stem to form a new word or word form. Affixes may be derivational, like English ''-ness'' and ''pre-'', or inflectional, like English plural ''-s'' and past tense ''-ed''. They ...
es in the Mayan languages implies that the Huastecs were in contact with the proto- Tzeltal branch of Mayan. In Proto-Mayan, absolutives could be marked either by a
prefix A prefix is an affix which is placed before the stem of a word. Adding it to the beginning of one word changes it into another word. For example, when the prefix ''un-'' is added to the word ''happy'', it creates the word ''unhappy''. Particul ...
or a
suffix In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns, adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs. Suffixes can carr ...
, depending on the presence of a tense/ aspect marker. This feature was retained in Q'anjob'al (a Maya language, spoken in the
Cuchumatanes The Sierra de los Cuchumatanes is the highest non-volcanic mountain range in Central America. Its elevations range from to over , and it covers a total area of .Lovell 2005:11 With an area of situated above , it is also the most extensive hig ...
mountains of
Guatemala Guatemala ( ; ), officially the Republic of Guatemala ( es, República de Guatemala, links=no), is a country in Central America. It is bordered to the north and west by Mexico; to the northeast by Belize and the Caribbean; to the east by Hon ...
), but lost in other branches. (Yucatecan always uses a suffix for absolutives, while K'iche' always uses a prefix.) Huastec appears to have been influenced by proto-Tzeltal, resulting in such innovations as the
preposition Prepositions and postpositions, together called adpositions (or broadly, in traditional grammar, simply prepositions), are a class of words used to express spatial or temporal relations (''in'', ''under'', ''towards'', ''before'') or mark various ...
''ta'', used with the object of a
verb A verb () is a word ( part of speech) that in syntax generally conveys an action (''bring'', ''read'', ''walk'', ''run'', ''learn''), an occurrence (''happen'', ''become''), or a state of being (''be'', ''exist'', ''stand''). In the usual descr ...
in the third person. If, as seems likely, the Huastec-Maya split occurred around 2000 BCE, the Huastecs probably did not travel far from the Guatemala-Chiapas borderlands until after 1100 BCE, more or less, by which time the proto-Tzeltalans had been established as a separate branch.


Art

The Huastec people historically lived north of the Totonacs in the northeastern corner of Mesoamerica, which helped their influence with distinct style of art. The Huastec people spoke Mayan, which was once a useful trade language. Their art was influenced by the coastal area resulting in shell artifacts. Amongst their art they also made pots, gaming stones, platform pipes, and sculptures. These items were often made from shells and made into shape of human heads, engraved shell gorgets, fan headdresses, and of hunch backed humans.


Arrival in the Huasteca region

The Huasteca region of Mexico extends from the easternmost limestone ranges of the
Sierra Madre Oriental The Sierra Madre Oriental () is a mountain range in northeastern Mexico. The Sierra Madre Oriental is part of the American Cordillera, a chain of mountain ranges (cordillera) that consists of an almost continuous sequence of mountain ranges that f ...
, across the coastal plain and the Otontepec hills to the
Gulf of Mexico The Gulf of Mexico ( es, Golfo de México) is an ocean basin and a marginal sea of the Atlantic Ocean, largely surrounded by the North American continent. It is bounded on the northeast, north and northwest by the Gulf Coast of the United ...
, in northern
Veracruz Veracruz (), formally Veracruz de Ignacio de la Llave (), officially the Free and Sovereign State of Veracruz de Ignacio de la Llave ( es, Estado Libre y Soberano de Veracruz de Ignacio de la Llave), is one of the 31 states which, along with Me ...
state, eastern
San Luis Potosí San Luis Potosí (), officially the Free and Sovereign State of San Luis Potosí ( es, Estado Libre y Soberano de San Luis Potosí), is one of the 32 states which compose the Federal Entities of Mexico. It is divided in 58 municipalities and i ...
state, and (by some definitions) southern
Tamaulipas Tamaulipas (), officially the Free and Sovereign State of Tamaulipas ( es, Estado Libre y Soberano de Tamaulipas), is a state in the northeast region of Mexico; one of the 31 states which, along with Mexico City, comprise the 32 Federal Entiti ...
. At least three indigenous languages are spoken in parts of the region today: Nahuatl (a Uto-Aztecan language), spoken especially in Veracruz, but also in San Luis Potosí; Pame (an Oto-Manguean language). spoken in the hilly borderlands of San Luis Potosí and
Querétaro Querétaro (), officially the Free and Sovereign State of Querétaro ( es, Estado Libre y Soberano de Querétaro, links=no; Otomi: ''Hyodi Ndämxei''), is one of the 32 federal entities of Mexico. It is divided into 18 municipalities. Its cap ...
; and Huastec (Wastek) (a Maya language), spoken in San Luis Potosí and northernmost Veracruz, and formerly in Tamaulipas. Some would include the Totonac-speaking area, in north-central Veracruz, as part of the Huasteca. The Huastec region was known to the Aztecs (ancestors of today's Nahuatl speakers, who arrived in the Huasteca around 1450) for its fertile abundance, and includes the northernmost patches of tropical moist forest and cloud forest in the Americas. The Huastecs arrived in the Huasteca between 1500 BCE and 900 BCE. The linguistic evidence is corroborated by archaeological discoveries. In 1954, Richard Stockton MacNeish found ceramics and figurines in the Middle Formative period, called "Pavon de Panuco" in the Panuco River sites of the Huasteca, which resemble Preclassic objects from
Uaxactun Uaxactun (pronounced ) is an ancient sacred place of the Maya civilization, located in the Petén Basin region of the Maya lowlands, in the present-day department of Petén, Guatemala. The site lies some north of the major center of Tikal. T ...
, a Petén-region Maya site. A date of no earlier than 1100 BCE for the Huastecs’ arrival at their present location seems most likely, since they probably had not arrived at the north-central Veracruz site of Santa Luisa until about 1200 BCE, the phase at the end of the Early Formative period known locally as the "Ojite phase." Artifacts of the period include Panuco-like basalt ''manos'' and ''metates''. (The Huastecs remained in Santa Luisa, located east of Papantla near the Gulf coast, until supplanted or absorbed by the Totonacs around AD 1000). One nexus of carved iconographic traditions, the "yoke-palm-axe" complex, was found from Jaina Island in coastal
Campeche Campeche (; yua, Kaampech ), officially the Free and Sovereign State of Campeche ( es, Estado Libre y Soberano de Campeche), is one of the 31 states which make up the 32 Federal Entities of Mexico. Located in southeast Mexico, it is bordered by ...
to the Huasteca (and in between, in Aparicio, Veracruz), in association with the pelota ballgame, decapitation, and tooth mutilation; however, this may reflect coastal trade contacts after the Huastecs were established in the Huasteca.


Huastec–Maya separation

Proto-Maya, the common ancestor of all Maya languages, was probably spoken in west-central Guatemala, around the highland pine-oak forests of the Cuchumatanes mountain chain: north of the
Motagua The Motagua River () is a river in Guatemala. It rises in the western highlands of Guatemala where it is also called Río Grande, and runs in an easterly direction to the Gulf of Honduras. The final few kilometres of the river form part of the G ...
and Grijalva river valleys, through patches of cloud forest, and down to the edge of the tropical forest lowlands near the Ixcán and Chixoy (Negro) rivers, which flow into the
Usumacinta River The Usumacinta River (; named after the howler monkey) is a river in southeastern Mexico and northwestern Guatemala. It is formed by the junction of the Pasión River, which arises in the Sierra de Santa Cruz (in Guatemala) and the Salinas ...
. Evidence that this region was the Maya "heartland" include its being located near the center of present-day language diversity of the Maya language family (and therefore requiring the minimum number of moves to place the languages in their current locations), the fact that proto-Maya included words for flora and fauna from both highland and lowland areas, and the debatable idea that it is easier for a group of people to spread from a highland region to a lowland one than vice versa. Not all archaeological evidence agrees with this conclusion: there are older, unbroken ceramic traditions from Loltun Cave in Yucatán, as well as
Cuello Cuello is a Maya archaeological site in northern Belize. The site is that of a farming village with a long occupational history. It was originally dated to 2000 BC, but these dates have now been corrected and updated to around 1200 BC. Its inhab ...
in Belize, which suggest alternative Maya homelands. Whether the proto-Huastecs split from the rest of the Maya in 2200 or in 1200 BCE, the separation occurred at least a millennium before the rise of classic Maya culture. It is no surprise, therefore, that the word "to write" is different in proto-Huastec ''(θuc-)'' and in the other Maya language branch ''(c’ib)''. 2000 BCE is a reasonable date for the Huastec/Maya split, and the slopes of the Cuchumatanes range as a reasonable location for the speakers of proto-Maya, it seems likely that the split occurred after these proto-Maya speakers (or a portion of them) began to migrate north, probably along the
Usumacinta River The Usumacinta River (; named after the howler monkey) is a river in southeastern Mexico and northwestern Guatemala. It is formed by the junction of the Pasión River, which arises in the Sierra de Santa Cruz (in Guatemala) and the Salinas ...
, and before the two groups resulting from the split began to move in opposite directions: the proto-Huastec speakers moving northwest (and, soon thereafter, the proto- Chicomuceltec west into the Chiapas highlands), and the proto-Yucatec/other Maya-speakers spreading northeast (one branch of which became Chontal, presumed by many from its widespread loan words and hieroglyphic evidence to be the dominant language of the classic Peten Maya heartland) (see Fig. 1). While we have no direct archaeological evidence to explain the split itself, we can assume by linguistic evidence that contact was soon cut off between the two groups, despite there being no geographical feature that would automatically isolate them from each other. The intervening feature, then, was likely a powerful linguistic-cultural group. What group occupied the Usumacinta River-Gulf Coast lowlands (mainly in today's Mexican state of Tabasco) between 2000 BCE (when the proto-Huastecs began their journey) and 1000 BCE (by which time the proto-Yucatecs had arrived in Yucatán, the Chicomuceltecs had been isolated from the Huastecs, and the Huastecs were arriving in central Veracruz)? Most scholars propose that this region was inhabited by speakers of the Mixe–Zoque family. While speakers of Mixe–Zoquean languages are today confined to the mountains of northeast
Oaxaca Oaxaca ( , also , , from nci, Huāxyacac ), officially the Free and Sovereign State of Oaxaca ( es, Estado Libre y Soberano de Oaxaca), is one of the 32 states that compose the political divisions of Mexico, Federative Entities of Mexico. It is ...
, along the backbone of the
Isthmus of Tehuantepec The Isthmus of Tehuantepec () is an isthmus in Mexico. It represents the shortest distance between the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific Ocean. Before the opening of the Panama Canal, it was a major overland transport route known simply as the T ...
, and into extreme western Chiapas, it is likely that they once occupied the entire Gulf Coast lowland from the isthmus to the Tuxtla mountains – in other words, the
Olmec The Olmecs () were the earliest known major Mesoamerican civilization. Following a progressive development in Soconusco, they occupied the tropical lowlands of the modern-day Mexican states of Veracruz and Tabasco. It has been speculated that ...
heartland, soon dominated by the presumably Mixe–Zoque-speaking Olmec civilization of about 1400 to 500 BCE. One line of evidence that the Olmecs spoke Mixe–Zoque are the words that the proto-Huastecs borrowed from proto-Mixe–Zoque as they passed through the southern Gulf lowlands; for example, ''ciw'', meaning "squash." Thus, there is some reason to ascribe the linguistic isolation of early Huastecs from other Maya speakers to proto-Olmecs speaking a Mixe–Zoque language, themselves recently arrived after migrating northward from the Soconusco region of the Pacific coast and across the isthmus of Tehuantepec. There is much stronger evidence that the push for the Huastecs’ further migration up the Gulf coast was caused by the active presence of the early Olmecs (c. 1400 to 1100 BCE) of San Lorenzo and associated sites. If this is true, most of the distance that the Huastecs migrated during their entire history, from Guatemala to the Huasteca, was traveled in only a century or two at most: the portion between the Olmec heartland around San Lorenzo, and the environs of San Luisa. The Huastecs and the Yucatán Maya were reunited, in a way, during the late nineteenth century, when Huastec chicle-tappers and lumbermen were transported to the state of Campeche to work the similar forests there, mainly employed by U.S.-based companies. A cross-Gulf steamship trade developed at the same time, with products such as salt exported from Campeche to Tuxpan (a Huastec-region port), and items such as sugar from Tuxpan to Campeche.Vadillo Lopez and Riviera Ayala, p. 96


See also

* Huastec State


Notes


References

*Ariel de Vidas, A. 2003. "Ethnicidad y cosmología: La construccion cultural de la diferencia entre los teenek (huaxtecos) de Veracruz", in UNAM, ''Estudios de Cultura Maya.'' Vol. 23. *Campbell, L. and T. Kaufman. 1985. "Maya linguistics: Where are we now?", in'' Annual Review of Anthropology.'' Vol. 14, pp. 187–98 *Dahlin, B. et al. 1987. "Linguistic divergence and the collapse of Preclassic civilization in southern Mesoamerica". ''American Antiquity.'' Vol. 52, No. 2, pp. 367–82. *INAH. 1988. ''Atlas cultural de México: Lingüística.'' Mexico City: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia. *Kaufman, T. 1976. "Archaeological and linguistic correlations in Mayaland and associated areas of Mesoamerica." ''World Archaeology'' 8:101-18. *Malstrom, V. 1985. "The origins of civilization in Mesoamerica: A geographic perspective", in L. Pulsipher, ed. ''Yearbook of the Conference of Latin Americanist Geographers.'' Vol. 11, pp. 23–29. *Ochoa, L. 2003. "La costa del Golfo y el área maya: Relaciones imaginables o imaginadas?", in UNAM, ''Estudios de Cultura Maya.'' Vol. 23. *Robertson, J. 1993. "The origins and development of Huastec pronouns." ''International Journal of American Linguistics.'' 59(3):294–314 *Stresser-Pean, G. 1989. "Los indios huastecos." In ''Huastecos y Totonacas'', edited by L. Ochoa. Mexico City: CONACULTA. *Vadillo López, C. and C. Riviera Ayala. 2003. "El tráfico marítimo, vehículo de relaciones culturales entre la región maya chontal de Laguna de Términos y la región huaxteca del norte de Veracruz, siglos XVI-XIX", in UNAM, ''Estudios de Cultura Maya.'' Vol. 23. *Wilkerson, J. 1972. ''Ethnogenesis of the Huastecs and Totonacs.'' PhD dissertation, Department of Anthropology and Archaeology, Tulane University, New Orleans.


External links


Orientation: Wasteko
Countries and Their Cultures {{DEFAULTSORT:Huastec People Mesoamerican cultures Sierra Madre Oriental