Potonchán
Chontal Maya city / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Potonchán, was a Chontal Maya city, capital of the minor kingdom known as Tavasco or Tabasco. It occupied the left bank of the Tabasco River, which the Spanish renamed the Grijalva River, in the current Mexican state of Tabasco.
Potonchán | |
---|---|
City-state of Maya | |
1519 | |
Monument to the Mayan chief Tabscoob in Villahermosa, Tabasco. | |
Location of Potonchan in modern Mexico. | |
Demonym | Maya |
Government | |
Cacique | |
• 1518-1519 | Tabscoob |
Today part of | Mexico |
...There exists a great city extending along the Tabasco river; so great and celebrated, as one cannot measure, however, says the pilot Alaminos and others with him, that is extends flanking the coast, about five hundred thousand steps and has twenty-five thousand houses, dispersed among gardens, that are made splendidly with stones and lime in whose construction projects the admirable industry and are of the architects...
— Peter Martyr, De Insulis, p. 349
Juan de Grijalva arrived to this town on June 8, 1518, and christened the river with his name and met with the Maya chief Tabscoob to whom, it is said, he gave his green velvet doublet.
Later, on March 12, 1519, the Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés arrived. Cortés, unlike Grijalva, was received by the natives in a warlike fashion, leading to the Battle of Centla. After the native defeat, Cortés founded the first Spanish settlement in New Spain, the town of Santa María de la Victoria, on top of Potonchán.