Nito

Nito was a trading city near the mouth of the Rio Dulce during the late postclassic Mayan period. Mayan states had quarters at Nito, though it may have been a Toltec Nahua speaking outpost. A party of Spaniards tried to found a colony, probably on the Cayo Grande at the northeast end of the Golfete but they had trouble finding enough to eat and so they took over Nito. These hungry ones were visited by Cortez (see below) on his long cross-country March to Honduras. The site of Nito is thought to be lost by most Mayanists, but a topographical map of the area shows an archaeological site called nito (see below).

These are the pages from Cortez’s 5^th letter to Charles V that mention the city of Nito.

According to a Guatemalan topo map (see below and Livingston, series E754, Sheet 2463 III) there is an archaeological site called Nito on the crest of a high hill about 1 km southwest of the Aldea (Communidad) of Tameja on the Rio Tameja. The Rio Tameja flows into the Rio Dulce from the south near the northeast end of the Golfete. Richard Orser and I tried to reach the site on Thursday March 30, 2006, by going up the Rio Tameja in a dinghy with a small outboard motor. We were unable to go very far up the river in the dinghy because heavy rains the night before had swollen the river and the water was too fast for the dinghy to make any progress. We left the dinghy and hiked overland up the west side of the river through flooded milpas but soon encountered a thick jungle that forced us further to the west. We were never able to return to the river and did not make it to Aldea Tameja. No one to whom we talked knew anything about an old city or ruin in the area. We ended up at the village of Quebrada Seca on the pipeline road and returned to our boat at the mouth of the Rio Tameja by getting a ride in the cayuco that belonged to Victor, the owner of Finca Rio Bonito. The hill that probably has the Nito ruin can be seen from the northeast part of the Golfete. Another way of approaching the ruin would be to take the pipeline road from the highway near Frontera to Quebrada Seca. The map shows a trail from Quebrada Seca to the Aldea of Tameja.

Chris Chase-Dunn

April 13, 2006

Nito bibliography

Chapman, Anne C. 1957 “Port of trade enclaves in Aztec and Maya civilizations” Pp. 114-153 in Karl Polanyi, Conrad M. Arensberg and Harry W. Pearson, Trade and Markets in the Early Empires. Chicago: Henry Regnery.

Coe, Michael D. 1992 Breaking the Maya Code. New York: Thames and Hudson.

Cortes, Hernan 1976 Letters from Mexico. Anthony Pagden (trans.) New Haven: Yale University Press.

McKillop, Heather 2002 Salt: White Gold of the Ancient Maya. Gainesville: University of Florida Press.

_______________2005 In Search of the Maya Sea Traders. College Station, Texas: Texas A and M University Press.

Sabloff, Jeremy and William J. Rathje 1975 A Study of Changing Pre-Columbian Commercial Systems. Cambridge: Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology. Harvard University.