The Purépecha were late arrivals in Mexico, flourished from 1100 to 1530 CE in the volcanic highland of Michoacán. They were enemies of the Aztecs, but unlike the Aztecs they left no personal documentary histories or inspired well-known Hispanic treatises. There are some hints they may have originated from South America, since there are some linguistic similarities to the Mayan and Quechua language, but they remain something of an enigma. Not only was their language unrelated to Nahuatl or any of the native tongues around them, but their culture, technology and religion was strikingly different to that of their Mesoamerican neighbours. Only about ten percent of the 1.5 million people in the ancient Purépecha Empire were of the ruling Purépecha stock.

Purépecha meant "latecomers" or "recent arrivals" in their own language. The Nahuatl name for the Purépecha was Michoaque (those-who-have-fish) – whence also the name of Michoacán, "the land of the fishermen". The Spaniards labeled the local Indians Tarascos (Tarascans) from the native word tarascué or tariácuri, meaning "relatives" or "in-laws", for reasons that are not entirely clear. According to the Relación de Michoacána*, it was a term the Purépecha used mockingly for the Spaniards, who regularly violated their women, but the Spaniards mistakenly took it up as a name for the Purépecha themselves.

The Purépecha religious and administrative center, and probably the only settlement of any size, was Tzintzuntzan ("Place of the Hummingbirds"), near Lake Patzcuaro. Tzintzuntzan was dominated by five step pyramids called yácatas - the temples themselves do not survive today; only their unusual terraced circular platforms, two of which have been restored. The yácatas appear to have been been both mortaries and dwellings.

Despite several attempts, including a fierce war in 1479 when the Aztec king Axayacatl was routed, the Purépecha were never conquered by the Aztec Empire and remained a major rival on their western border. Remarks made by Spanish soldiers and missionaries give the impression that the Purépecha king was considered to be second in power only to the Aztec ruler Moctezuma; indeed, some early accounts even rank the two as equals.

However, the arrival of Hernán Cortés meant the end of both the Aztec and the Purépecha Empires. Knowing the Spanish were marching on Tenochtitlán, the Aztecs asked their traditional enemies for help, but instead of providing assistance, the Purépecha sacrificed the Aztec messengers. Tenochtitlán fell in 1520 after a bloody siege, and in 1522 it was the turn of the Purépecha. A weak shadow of his fiercely warlike forebears, the last Purépecha king Tangaxoan II submitted to the Spanish without a fight.

*The best (and practically only) source of historical information on the Purépecha is the Relación de Michoacána, a collection of native chronicles and ethnographic information compiled in Spanish about 1539, probably by Fray Martín de Jesus de la Coruña and his Franciscan monks.

Websites consulted:
http://www.ease.com/~randyj/tzin.htm
http://www.dartmouth.edu/~izapa/index.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarascan