Central America · Mesoamerican civilizations
Tarascan State
c. 1300–1530
The Tarascan (Purépecha) Empire, called in Purépecha Iréchecua Tzintzuntzáni ("the lands of Tzintzuntzan"), was centered at Tzintzuntzan ("place of hummingbirds") on the shores of Lake Pátzcuaro in Michoacán, and was the second-largest state in Mesoamerica at Spanish contact and the Aztecs' foremost rival.
- Existed
- c. 1300–1530
- Shown on the map
- 1305–1533
- Peak area
- 75k km²
- Region
- Central America
Overview
The Tarascan (Purépecha) Empire, called in Purépecha Iréchecua Tzintzuntzáni ("the lands of Tzintzuntzan"), was centered at Tzintzuntzan ("place of hummingbirds") on the shores of Lake Pátzcuaro in Michoacán, and was the second-largest state in Mesoamerica at Spanish contact and the Aztecs' foremost rival. According to the Relación de Michoacán, it was founded by Tariácuri (r. c. 1300–1350) of the Uacúsecha ("Eagles") lineage, who gathered the Lake Pátzcuaro communities into one state and installed his son Hiquingaje at Pátzcuaro and his nephews Hiripan and Tangáxoan at Ihuatzio and Tzintzuntzan respectively, forming an internal "triple alliance." Power consolidated at Tzintzuntzan by the mid-15th century, with a bureaucratic administration established around 1440; the empire's population may have approached 1.5 million by 1519.
Decline and legacy
The Tarascans were, in the words of historian Robert West, "the foremost metallurgists of pre-Conquest Mexico," working copper, silver, gold, and bronze into tools, weapons, and ornaments — a technological distinction unusual in Mesoamerica — and their luxury art notably incorporated hummingbird feathers. They ruled a genuine territorial state (Michoacán and parts of Jalisco, Colima, Guanajuato, Guerrero, and the State of Mexico), defending a fortified, patrolled frontier that repeatedly repelled Aztec invasions. The ruler bore the title cazonci (or irecha). Learning of Tenochtitlan's fall, the last independent cazonci, Tangáxuan II, submitted to the Spanish in 1522, and Cristóbal de Olid's force reached Tzintzuntzan that year. Tangáxuan was later tortured and executed in 1530 by the notorious conquistador Nuño de Guzmán; the region became the governorship of Michoacán in 1543. The Purépecha remain a distinct people of Michoacán today.
Common questions
- What was the Tarascan State?
- The Tarascan (Purépecha) Empire, called in Purépecha Iréchecua Tzintzuntzáni ("the lands of Tzintzuntzan"), was centered at Tzintzuntzan ("place of hummingbirds") on the shores of Lake Pátzcuaro in Michoacán, and was the second-largest state in Mesoamerica at Spanish contact and the Aztecs' foremost rival.
- When did the Tarascan State exist?
- The Tarascan State existed c. 1300–1530. On this map it is drawn 1305–1533.
- How large was the Tarascan State?
- At its greatest extent drawn on this map, the Tarascan State covered about 75,000 km². That is the largest area the border data gives it across the years it is drawn, not necessarily its greatest extent in history.
- How did the Tarascan State end?
- The Tarascans were, in the words of historian Robert West, "the foremost metallurgists of pre-Conquest Mexico," working copper, silver, gold, and bronze into tools, weapons, and ornaments — a technological distinction unusual in Mesoamerica — and their luxury art notably incorporated hummingbird feathers.
Sources
This compendium cites its sources once for the whole document rather than per territory. Its bibliography names the English Wikipedia articles for each polity and for the key figures and events as the basis of these profiles, supplemented by Encyclopaedia Britannica, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Geographic, EBSCO Research Starters and academic sources. The article this entry is anchored on:
- Wikipedia — Tarascan state en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarascan_state
This entry was last updated .
This entry was researched and drafted with AI from the sources above, and has not been reviewed by a historian. How entries are made
Text available under CC BY-SA 4.0: reuse it with a credit to The World Through Time and a link to this page. Passages drawing on the Wikipedia articles listed above are also licensed CC BY-SA 4.0 by their contributors.
Border geometry for the map itself comes from Cliopatria v0.12 (Seshat Global History Databank, CC-BY-4.0).
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