Azqueltán
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Azqueltán is a settlement located on the banks of the Bolaños River in the municipality of Villa Guerrero, Jalisco, Mexico. Azqueltán means "place of the ants" in the Tepehuán language.
According to John Alden Mason, the town was originally a settlement of the indigenous Tepehuan who migrated to the isolated canyon location in the 13th or 14th Century AD following droughts in the northern Sierra Madre and Arizona during that time. In 1534, Spaniards arrived in the area and Huichol groups settled in the surrounding areas, most likely as a result of Spanish incursion into their homelands to the East.
In the eighteenth century, historically Tepehuan lands outside of the river canyon were taken over by Spaniards and Tlaxcaltecs brought to the region as colonizers by the Spaniards. While other historically Tepecano settlements in the region such as Totatiche and Temastian lost their Tepecano identity due to migration of the Spanish and Tlaxacaltecs, inhabitants of Azqueltan, isolated in the river canyon, maintained their Tepehuán identity and language through the beginning of the 20th century.
In more recent years, Huichol inhabitants of the surrounding areas settled in the village.
