"Nahua" redirects here. For other uses, see Nahua (disambiguation).
Nahuas
Nahua children in traditional clothes
Total population
2,694,189+
Regions with significant populations
Mexico Oaxaca, Morelos, Puebla, Hidalgo, Michoacán, Veracruz, Jalisco, Estado de México, Mexico City, Tlaxcala, Chihuahua, Durango, San Luis Potosi and Guerrero
El Salvador Ahuachapan, Sonsonate, San Salvador, Santa Ana
Nicaragua Rivas, Chinandega, Nueva Segovia, Matagalpa, Jinotega
Languages
Nahuatl, Nawat and Spanish
Religion
Christianity (Predominantly Roman Catholic with pre-colombia influence), Aztec religion
Related ethnic groups
Pipil, Nicarao, Mexicaneros, Indigenous people of the Americas and Mestizo, Mexica, Tlaxcallans
The Nahuas (/ˈnɑːwɑːz/NAH-wahz[1]) are a group of the indigenous people of Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica.[2][3][4][5][6][7] They comprise the largest indigenous group in Mexico and El Salvador.[8][9] They are a Mesoamerican ethnicity. The Mexica (Aztecs) are of Nahua ethnicity, as are their historical enemies, the Tlaxcallans (Tlaxcaltecs), and the Toltecs which predated both groups are often thought to have been as well. However, in the pre-Columbian period Nahuas were subdivided into many groups that did not necessarily share a common identity.
Their Nahuan languages, or Nahuatl, consist of many variants, several of which are mutually unintelligible. About 1.5 million Nahuas speak Nahuatl and another million speak only Spanish. Fewer than 1,000 native speakers of Nahuatl remain in El Salvador.[10]
It is suggested that the Nahua peoples originated near Aridoamerica, in regions of the present day Mexican states of Durango and Nayarit or the Bajío region. They split off from the other Uto-Aztecan speaking peoples and migrated into central Mexico around 500 CE. The Nahua then settled in and around the Basin of Mexico and spread out to become the dominant people in central Mexico. However, Nahuatl-speaking populations were present in smaller populations throughout Mesoamerica.
^"Nahua". Dictionary.com. 2012. Archived from the original on 19 April 2015. Retrieved 7 September 2012.
^"Pueblos Indígenas de Honduras | Territorio Indígena y Gobernanza". Archived from the original on 14 December 2021. Retrieved 14 December 2021.
^"9. Nahoas | Territorio Indígena y Gobernanza". Archived from the original on 6 May 2021. Retrieved 6 May 2021.
^"Do you know the origin of the word Guanacaste". 25 July 2018.
^"Guanacaste is a practically autonomous ethnolinguistic area and different from the rest of the country". 22 July 2020.
^Refugees, United Nations High Commissioner for. "Refworld | World Directory of Minorities and Indigenous Peoples - El Salvador". Refworld. Archived from the original on 6 May 2019. Retrieved 6 May 2019.
^"Nahua Peoples | Encyclopedia.com". www.encyclopedia.com. Archived from the original on 6 May 2019. Retrieved 6 May 2019.
^"Did you know Pipil is critically endangered?". Endangered Languages. Archived from the original on 14 December 2019. Retrieved 19 April 2015.
literally "Nahuatl-speaking people". The Nahuas are also sometimes referred to as Aztecs. Using this term for the Nahuas has generally fallen out of favor in...
call their own language Pipil, as most linguists do, but rather nāwat. The Nahuas of Durango call their language Mexicanero. Speakers of Nahuatl of the Isthmus...
to coastal Nahuas (this may have been a title for war chiefs or coastal warriors).[citation needed] After the Spanish victory, the Nahuas of Kuskatan...
individuals. State authorities meted out punishments solely. The Nahuas enshrined Nahua mores in these laws, criminalizing public acts of homosexuality...
people who were already there, resulting in tribal warfare between the Nahuas and the Huetares which lasted until Spanish arrival. As a Mesoamerican group...
plants among the Nahuas and Popolucas of Veracruz, Mexico. Agriculture and Human Values V25 65-77. Huber, Brad R. "The Recruitment of Nahua Curers: Role Conflict...
Honduras. They are a subgroup of Nahua people, who can also be known as Nawats, Nahuats, or Southern Nahuas.[citation needed] Nahua people originally resided...
grouped together with all Nahuatl-speaking people, collectively known as Nahuas. In 2020, there were estimated to be over 1.6 million Nahuatl speakers living...
Mexico such as Xochicalco and Cholula. At this time, during the Epi-Classic, Nahua peoples began moving south into Mesoamerica from the North, and became politically...
hundreds of different medicinal herbs and plants. A variety of indigenous Nahua and Novohispanic written works survived from the conquest and later colonial...
Mexico", demonstrated the existence of a powerful confederacy of Eastern Nahuas, Mixtecs and Zapotecs, along with the peoples they dominated throughout...
other Nahua Altepetl in Central Mexico. Vol. 2. University of Oklahoma Press. p. 101. ISBN 9780806129501. Lockhart, James (1996) [1992]. The Nahuas After...
1500 – c. 1529), more popularly known as La Malinche [la maˈlintʃe], a Nahua woman from the Mexican Gulf Coast, became known for contributing to the...
that since the Pipil language is so close to the Nahuatl language, the Nahuas of Honduras could have created the dish. However, no direct links have been...
1086/465892. S2CID 143084964. Canger, Una (1988). "Subgrupos de los dialectos nahuas". In J. Kathryn Josserand; Karen Dakin (eds.). Smoke and Mist: Mesoamerican...
together in certain areas, with Huastecs and Nahuas together in Ozuluama, Tantoyuca, Tamiahua and Tuxpan, and Nahuas and Otomis in Chicontepec and Huejutla...
of Nahuatl, or whether Nahuas had not yet arrived in central Mexico in the classic period. It is generally agreed that the Nahua peoples were not indigenous...
López Binnqüist, pages 2-7 "El Papel Amate Entre los Nahuas de Chicontepec" [Amate paper among the Nahuas of Chicontepec] (in Spanish). Veracruz, Mexico: Universidad...
Drawing accompanying text in Book XII of the 16th-century Florentine Codex (compiled 1555–1576), showing Nahuas of conquest-era central Mexico with smallpox...
the Nahuas, Totonacas and Otomi. There is also a small region locally called the Sierra Negra in which there are communities of Popolocas, Nahuas and...
Aztec Mexicas, Tepanecs, Acolhuas, and other Nahuatl-speaking peoples (or Nahuas) of the central Mexico region of Mesoamerica, in the Postclassic period...
Spanish Rule. Stanford: Stanford University Press 1964 Lockhart, James. The Nahuas after the Conquest. Stanford: Stanford University Press 1992. Rowe, John...
Mexico City (Spanish: Ciudad de México, locally [sjuˈða(ð) ðe ˈmexiko] ; abbr.: CDMX; Central Nahuatl: Mexihco Hueyaltepetl, Nahuatl pronunciation: [meːˈʃiʔko...
Restall, Matthew; Florine Asselbergs (2007). Invading Guatemala: Spanish, Nahua, and Maya Accounts of the Conquest Wars. University Parkv: Pennsylvania...
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