Huastec people

The Huastec /ˈwɑːstɛk/ or Téenek (contraction of Te' Inik, "people from here"; also known as Huaxtec, Wastek or Huastecos) are an indigenous people of Mexico living in the Huasteca, which includes the administrative divisions of Hidalgo, Veracruz, San Luis Potosí and Tamaulipas concentrated along the route of the Pánuco River and along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico.

There are approximately 66,000 Huastec speakers today, of which two-thirds are in San Luis Potosí and one-third in Veracruz, although their population was probably much higher, as much as half a million, when the Spanish arrived in 1529.

The Huastec civilization was one of the Mesoamerican cultures of the Pre-Columbian era. Based on archaeological remains, they are thought to date to approximately the 10th century BCE. However, their most productive period of civilization is usually considered to be the Postclassic era, between the fall of Teotihuacan and the rise of the Aztec Empire. Pre-Columbian Huastecs constructed temples on step-pyramids, carved independently-standing sculptures, and produced elaborately painted pottery. Other Mesoamerican peoples admired them for their musical abilities.

Around 1450, Aztec armies defeated the Huastecs under the leadership of Moctezuma I; the Huastecs thereafter paid tribute to the Aztec Empire but retained substantial local self-government.

The Huastecs were conquered by the Spanish Empire between 1519 and the 1530s. After the Spanish Conquest, many Huastecs were sold as slaves in the Caribbean by the Spanish.

The first grammatical and lexical description of the Huastec language accessible to Europeans was by Andrés de Olmos, a friar who wrote the first such grammars of Nahuatl and Totonac.