Of the various tribes called Popolocas, that living at the period of the conquest in and near Puebla was the most important. Their chief city was Tecamachcalco, and they occupied most of the old province of Tepeaca. We can form some idea of their number from the statement that in the year 1540 Father Francisco de las Navas visited their country for missionary purposes, and in less than two months converted (!) and baptized 12,000 of them, and this without any knowledge of their language.[192] The first who did obtain a familiarity with it was Francisco de Toral, afterwards first bishop of Yucatan. He described it as most difficult, but nevertheless succeeded in reducing it to rules and wrote an _Arte y Metodo_ of it, now unfortunately lost.[193] Its relationship has remained obscure. De Laet asserted that it was merely a corrupt dialect of the Nahuatl;[194] while Herrera was informed by his authorities that it was a wholly different tongue.[195] In this opinion he was right. In 1862 Dr. Berendt succeeded in obtaining a short vocabulary of it as it is still spoken at Oluta, Tesistepec, San Juan Volador and the neighboring country. A comparison shows that it belongs to the Mixe family. The ancient province of Tepeaca adjoined directly the territory of the Mixes, and this identification proves that their tongue was more important and extended much more widely than has hitherto been supposed. It was spoken, therefore, by the Tlapanecos, Coviscas and Yopes, who were located in this region. The Popoloca of Oaxaca is an entirely different tongue. It is mentioned as identical with the Chochona, and some have supposed this dialect, in which we have a _Catecismo_ by Father Roldan, was the same as the Popoloca of Tepeaca. This is an error. As I have said, the first missionary to master and write about the latter was Father Toral, who wrote his _Arte_ about 1561; but more than ten years before that, to wit, in 1550, Father Benito Fernandez had printed in the city of Mexico his _Doctrina en Lengua Misteca_, and had composed variants in the Tepuzcolola and Chochona dialects of that tongue.[196] The Chochona or Popoloca, of Oaxaca, belongs to the Zapotec-Mixtec, and not to the Zoque-Mixe family. The Popolocas who lived in and near Michoacan were also called Tecos, and Orozco y Berra enumerates the language they spoke, the Teca, among those which are extinct.[197] The name _Tecos_, however, was merely an abbreviated form of _Cuitlatecos_, and was applied to the conquered Nahuatl population around Michoacan. In some of the old glossaries _teco_ is explained by _Mexicano_.[198] The language they spoke belonged to the Nahuatl branch of the Uto-Aztecan stock.