Cortes first landed in Yucatan, on the island of Cozumel, where he heard word of two Spaniards that were shipwrecked off the coast several years earlier and knew Mayan, Guerrero and Aguilar. Guerrero was assimilated to Maya culture, had a wife and children, and was a war captain. Thus, his wife is really the mother of the first mestizo. Aguilar was a slave and wanted to return to Spain but first he acted as an interpretor for Hernan Cortes. When Cortes landed in Champoton, an ancient coastal city in the current state of Tabasco, he received Malintzin as a gift from the Batab or governor of that city state. Malintzin was a principal or noble person in her community who was sold as a slave to the Chontal-Maya. She would later be known as la Malinche or Dona Maria. Her name was actually Malin, possibly from the word "malinalli" or grass, but in Nahuatl the suffix "-tzin" is an honorary title of respect. Due to the fact that Malintzin knew both Nahuatl and Maya, she became Cortes's interpretor through Aguilar. Cortes would tell Aguilar what he wanted to say in Spanish, Aguilar would translate the message in Maya, and then Malintzin would translate the message in Nahuatl. A process that surely caused a great deal of confussion. Malintzin quickly learned Spanish, because she was extremely intelligent. She has received a bad rap because it is said that she was a traitor to her own people. Neither she nor anyone at the time knew of the cruelty of the Spainiards nor of their methods and traditions of conquest. She was a woman caught in the middle of an extremely interesting period in history.