Xaltocan

This article is about pre-Columbian city-state and island in the Valley of Mexico. For modern-day municipality in the state of Tlaxcala, see Xaltocan, Tlaxcala.
Map of the Valley of Mexico at the time of the Spanish conquest showing the location of lake Xaltocan.

Xaltocan was a pre-Columbian city-state and island in the Valley of Mexico, located in the center of Lake Xaltocan, part of an interconnected shallow lake system which included Lake Texcoco; this place is now inside the village of San Miguel Jaltocan in Nextlalpan, State of Mexico. The site was originally settled by the Otomi people but following a war in the late fourteenth century where the Otomi were defeated by an alliance of Tepanecs and Mexica the Otomi were driven off the island and relocated to Otumba, Metztitlan and Tlaxcala. The island of Xaltocan was then resettled by Nahuatl speakers.[1][2] The name can mean either of two things in the Nahuatl language: either 'sandy ground of spiders' or 'where it is planted on the sand'.[3]

  1. ^ Davies, 1980 p. 233-34
  2. ^ Morehart 2012
  3. ^ "Archive copy of Tlaxcala - Xaltocan". Archived from the original on March 6, 2012. Retrieved 28 April 2007.