page_title: History of Monterrey
section_title: First settlers
hierarchical_section_title: History of Monterrey / First settlers
context_page_description: The history of the Mexican city of Monterrey is closely linked with the history of the state of Nuevo León. When the New Kingdom of León was founded, it included Monterrey, Monclova, Saltillo and Cerralvo. The founding families formed a group of about thirty people in each locality. Gradually, Nuevo León was populated with families of nomadic herders of Spanish origin who fought and displaced the native indigenous groups in the region. The city was a step away from the border with the United States and it began to be a strategic location for industry and trade between the two countries. Originally isolated by the Sierra Madre and far from the center of New Spain and independent Mexico, in the late 19th century and throughout the twentieth century various demographic, social, political, and economic issues began to unfold.
context_section_description: The first settlers were the Chichimecas. Current research has shown a culture of twelve thousand years old.
  They were generally called Chichimecas to distinguish them from the larger and more powerful cultural groups of Middle America: the Mayan, Olmec, Zapotec, etc. It is said they were nomadic or semi-nomadic, not wandering aimlessly, but obeying regular movement patterns inside recognized territories; what anthropologists call territorial nomadism. They did not create large urban complexes like other peoples in central Mexico, the splendor of whom sometimes overshadowed them.  The Spanish settlers "baptized" them by erasing their original names.  Specialists have differentiated several linguistic nuclei between the tribes that inhabited the region but have failed to find a uniform approach, placing them in the family of the Athabascans, the Hokan or Macro-Yuma, subgroup Coahuilteco-Karankawa. Those who inhabited the region of what is now the city were called the  Aguaceros ("heavy rains") and the "Malincheños".
  They lived in caves and river ravines where they left traces of their passage in paintings,  engravings, and movable items which  might have been amulets used in fertility rites or initiation of puberty, as well as mortars, hollowed stones and spearheads of all kinds ranging from those dating back millennia like those found in the municipality of Ramones with more than 11,000 thousand years of antiquity, to those used by the tribes of the Comanches in the 19th century. The density of prehistoric domestic waste found in the area confirms that there was a relatively large population, at least seasonally. Radiocarbon tests placed the earliest occupation in Boca de Potrerillos about 8000 years ago.
  Between 1960 and 1967, a group of archaeologists from the University of Texas at Austin headed by Jeremiah F. Epstein, undertook an extensive research program in the entire area.
  There is also an archaeological museum in the town of Mina and another in Linares created by Pablo Salce.
caption: Yumas native of William H. Emory report. Washington 1857
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