La Gran Chichimeca was a term used by the Spanish conquistadores of the 16th century to refer to an area of the northern central Mexican altiplano (plateau), a territory which today is encompassed by the modern Mexican states of Jalisco, Aguascalientes, Nayarit, Guanajuato, Queretaro, and Zacatecas.
They derived the term from the Aztec who referred to the nomadic tribes of the area as “chichimeca”.
[2] Seventy years after the 1521 fall of the Aztec capital, Tenochtitlan (present-day Mexico City), the Spaniards had failed to subdue the north of New Spain, La Gran Chichimeca.
This meant they were unable to exploit the rich silver deposits in the region.
Based upon language groups, iconography, trade items, and re-examinations of Mesoamerican architecture, the boundaries have moved around over the years as a result of new evidence.