tepehuani.

Headword: 
tepehuani.
Principal English Translation: 

the victor in a battle, literally, one who starts at (i.e., charges, attacks) people; Spaniards equated this with "conqueror" (see Molina)

Orthographic Variants: 
tepeoani, tepeuani, tepeuanime, tepeoanime
IPAspelling: 
teːpeːwɑni
Alonso de Molina: 

tepeuani. conquistador, o vencedor de batalla.
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 1571, part 2, Nahuatl to Spanish, f. 102v. col. 2. Thanks to Joe Campbell for providing the transcription.

Attestations from sources in English: 

yn tlacatl catca yn itoca tlacayelleltzin cihuacohuatl yn cemanahuac tepehuani = the lord named Tlacaeleltzin cihuacoatl, conqueror of the world (central Mexico, early seventeenth century)
Codex Chimalpahin: Society and Politics in Mexico Tenochtitlan, Tlatelolco, Culhuacan, and Other Nahuatl Altepetl in Central Mexico; The Nahuatl and Spanish Annals and Accounts Collected and Recorded by don Domingo de San Antón Muñón Chimalpahin Quauhtlehuanitzin, eds. and transl. Arthur J. O. Anderson and Susan Schroeder (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997), vol. 1, 138–139.

cenca tiacaoā, tepeoanime, novian tepeuhtinemi = [the Mexica] are very strong, great warriors, conquerors, who go about conquering everywhere (central Mexico, sixteenth century)
James Lockhart, We People Here: Nahuatl Accounts of the Conquest of Mexico, Repertorium Columbianum v. 1 (Los Angeles: UCLA Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 1993), 92.

Dances observed by ethnographers in Nahua regions of the southern DF and the western State of Mexico were catalogued by Fernando Horcasitas, including the Danza de los Lobitos, also called the Danza de los Tepehuanes. It seems to have the theme of jaguar hunting. Would the sense of tepehuani here be relating to hunting rather than conquering people? Sometimes the "lobitos" are called "tecuanis" or "tecuanes." (twentieth century, Guerrero)
Fernando Horcasitas, "La Danza de los Tecuanes," Estudios de Cultura Náhuatl 14 (1980), 239–286, see especially pp. 246–247.

Attestations from sources in Spanish: 

…oquichtin tepeuani…. = …varones, conquistadores…. (Quauhtinchan, s. XVI)
Historia Tolteca-Chichimeca, eds. Paul Kirchhoff, Lina Odena Güemes, y Luis Reyes García (México: CISINAH, INAH-SEP, 1976), 165, 159.

Yeuantin y yn calmecactlaca yn tepeuani yn acico yn tlachiualtepec yn Chollolan = Ellos son los calmecactlaca, los conquistadores que llegaron a Tlachiualtepec a Cholollan. (Quauhtinchan, s. XVI)
Historia Tolteca-Chichimeca, eds. Paul Kirchhoff, Lina Odena Güemes, y Luis Reyes García (México: CISINAH, INAH-SEP, 1976), 122, 147.

themes: 
Hunting or Fishing
War, Conflict