Sedentary, town-and-city-dwelling Nahua-speaking people of the Juchipila-Nochistlán highlands — organizationally the most advanced society on the Chichimeca frontier — whose 1540-42 revolt (the Mixtón War) under Tenamaztle nearly drove Spain out of Nueva Galicia; a war fought, and lost, eight years before the separate Chichimeca War in which the Caxcán later fought as Spain's allies.
Crushed at the fall of the Mixtón stronghold in early 1542; thousands of captured rebels were enslaved or executed and Tenamaztle was captured (though he later escaped and was eventually tried in Spain, defended by Bartolomé de las Casas). Reduced to encomiendas, Caxcán auxiliaries subsequently fought alongside Spain against the nomadic Chichimeca nations in the 1550-1590 Chichimeca War. The 1584 cocoliztli epidemic further reduced their numbers and Caxcán identity and language eroded through intermarriage over the colonial period, though oral tradition and land-holding institutions persisted; the Mexican government today recognizes four Caxcán communities in southern Zacatecas engaged in a cultural/language revitalization effort.
The polity-specific scholarly monograph on the Spanish conquest of Nueva Galicia and the Mixtón War, the Caxcán's own war
The standard scholarly source on the whole Chichimeca-frontier conflict complex (Mixtón and Chichimeca Wars), Indians & silver' by Philip Wayne Powell.
A dedicated study of the Caxcán leader of the Mixtón War by Mexico's leading Nahuatl scholar, no ISBN available in the OL record).
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