Totonac Religion
TOTONAC RELIGION. In the city of Zempoala (Cempoallan), situated in what is today the state of Veracruz, Mexico, the Totonac people were the first to receive Europeans to the great land mass of continental America. The year was 1519 and the Spanish conquest of Mexico had begun. At that time the Totonac occupied a strip of land flanked by the Atlantic Ocean and the Sierra Madre Oriental, between the Cazones River in the north and La Antigua River near the present port of Veracruz. Two important Totonac ceremonial centers existed in this territory. The first, El Tajín, was located in the north and had ceased to function before the arrival of the Spanish. The second, Zempoala, is reputed to have been populous when the Spanish arrived; soon after, it witnessed the collapse of its idols and their replacement with the Christian cross.
Well before the Conquest, the Totonac people had extended even farther south, to the margins of the Papaloapan River. The Nahuatl-speaking Aztec had, however, reduced the extent of the Totonac's southern territories, and at the time of the Spanish arrival Zempoala, the Totonac capital, was paying tribute to its Aztec rulers. By this time Nahuatl was the lingua franca in the region, and thus the Spanish priests used Nahuatl terms to describe Totonac religion, a practice still common among scholars today.
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