Tepehuán

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The Tepehuán (Tepehuanes or Tepehuanos) are an indigenous ethnic group in northwest Mexico, whose villages at the time of Spanish conquest spanned a large territory along the Sierra Madre Occidental from Chihuahua and Durango in the north to Jalisco in the south. The southern Tepehuán community included an isolated settlement (Azqueltán) in the middle of Huichol territory in the Bolaños River canyon. The southern Tepehuán were historically referred to as Tepecanos.

The Tepehuán languages are part of the Uto-Aztecan linguistic family , within which it is grouped with O'odham to form the Piman family.

The name is pronouncedtepe'wan, and is often spelt Tepehuan without the accent in English language publications. This can cause confusion with the languages called Tepehua (tePEwa), which are collectively referred to as Tepehuan (tePEwan). They are spoken on the other side of Mexico, and are closely related to Totonac and not at all to Tepehuán. The names of both groups come from Nahuatl and mean 'mountain dwellers' or 'mountain people'.

The Tepehuán are believed to have migrated south to Durango and Jalisco from Arizona in the 13th or 14th centuries AD, following severe droughts in Arizona. These same droughts are thought to have extinguished the Anasazi culture in the same region.