Search Issues: Update 2026-09-16 - Repairs to some of our search pages are ongoing. Thank you for your continued patience!

Meanwhile, elements of the Advanced Search are working and the Alphabetical Listings are working, too.

cacique.

(a loanword from Spanish)

Headword: 
cacique.
Principal English Translation: 

a word used by Spaniards for an indigenous ruler; tlatoani or tlahtoani, with the glottal stop (a loanword from Spanish, and before that, from Taíno)
The Tlaxcalan Actas: A Compendium of the Records of the Cabildo of Tlaxcala (1545-1627), eds. James Lockhart, Frances Berdan, and Arthur J.O. Anderson (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1986), 153.

Attestations from sources in English: 

Cacica is what one would expect to see for a woman, although we know of one example where a woman from the Valley of Toluca calls herself a "principala yhuan cacique." (San Pablo Tepemaxalco, Toluca Valley, 1762)
Caterina Pizzigoni, ed., Testaments of Toluca (Stanford: Stanford University Press and UCLA Latin American Center Publications, 2007), 139–40.

Cacique "sometimes had its original meaning, referring to the head of a dynastic lineage and holder of its right, but more often it simply meant a person of considerable wealth with high standing in the indigenous community." (San Pablo Tepemaxalco, Toluca Valley, 1762)
Caterina Pizzigoni, ed., Testaments of Toluca (Stanford: Stanford University Press and UCLA Latin American Center Publications, 2007), 139–40.

nehual notoca Maria Micaela yxpocatl = prenSipala = yhuan CaSique = I named Maria Micaela, unmarried woman, principala and cacique. (San Pablo Tepemaxalco, Toluca Valley, 1762)
Caterina Pizzigoni, ed., Testaments of Toluca (Stanford: Stanford University Press and UCLA Latin American Center Publications, 2007), 139–40.