[4] Neighbouring polities further afield included the Peten Itza, Dzuluinicob, Chetumal, and Bacalar to the north, and Lacandon, Palencano, and Chontal to the west.

[5] Such a situation positioned the Territory within the confluence of Ch'olan (Toquegua, Acala, Lacandon, Palencano, Chontal), Yucatecan (Mopan, Itza, Dzuluinicob, Chetumal), Quichean (Q'eqchi', Poqom), and Spanish (Verapaz, Bacalar) spheres of influence, and has thereby been described as frontier- or borderlands.

[12][nb 6] Beginning in the mid-eighth century, the region that would soon house the Manche Ch'ol Territory experienced marked political and demographic disintegration, including the collapse of city-states and mass exodus from these to the country.

[13] The Territory's residents are deemed probable descendants of the region's Classic period inhabitants, based on linguistic, ethnographic, and archaeological findings.

[14][nb 7] These are thought to have been restricted to the contact period extent of the Manche Ch'ol Territory by a post-900 migration of Yucatecan speakers from the northern Lowlands.

[16] In the 16th century, the coastal towns of Campin and Tzoite were given in encomienda to Hernando Sánchez de Aguilar; they fell within the jurisdiction of colonial Bacalar,[17] on the Yucatán coast near Chetumal.

In 1600 the regular presence of Manche Chʼol traders in Cahabón was again reported, and they were said to arrive in greater numbers for the town's festivities in honour of its patron saint.

[21] Friar Esguerra complained in 1605 of the great number of Christianised Qʼeqchiʼ Maya of Cahabón that were fleeing the town to live as apostates among the Manche Chʼol.

[22] By 1606 the missionaries had concentrated many Manche Chʼols in nine new mission towns, and had started to penetrate the territory of the neighbouring Mopan Maya, who were on the borders of the fiercely independent Itza of central Petén.

[11] The Dominican penetration of Mopan Territory alarmed the Itza, who started to harass the Manche Chʼol, driving them away from the mission towns.

[28] In 1678 the Manche Chʼol population was devastated by disease; in the area around the town of San Lucas Tzalac it killed every child under six years old and almost all of those under the age of ten.

Total deaths, including adults, numbered over 400 and the epidemic prompted all the Manche Chʼol in the affected region to abandon the mission towns and flee into the forest.

[32] Disappointed by their failure, in April 1694 the friars wrote a letter to the president of the Audiencia Real of Guatemala, Jacinto de Barrios Leal, stating their belief that any further peaceful attempts at converting the Chʼol peoples were pointless, and that the time had come for military action.

[35] Most of the surviving Manche Chʼol were forcibly resettled in the Guatemalan Highlands, in the villages of El Chol and Belén, in the Urran Valley near Rabinal.

The resettled Manche Chʼol suffered from the abrupt change of climate from tropical lowland rain forest to the cold highlands.

[30] By 1770 the Manche Chʼol were all but extinct; their original territory had been abandoned and had reverted to wilderness, and the few survivors relocated to the highlands numbered not more than 300 in the whole Urran Valley, where there were almost as many Spanish and ladinos.

[39] It is possible that a few Manche Chʼol survived in the forested interior of Toledo District in Belize, to be later absorbed by incoming Qʼeqchiʼ in the late 19th century.

[48][nb 9] Even after the Territory's towns on the coast of Belize fell under Spanish control in the 16th century, they continued to have close links with the independent inland Manche settlements.

[8] The towns in the Cancuén River drainage traded via land and riverine routes with both the independent Itza (notably with Nojpetén) and with colonial Verapaz (principally with Cobán and Cahabón).

[49] Manche Ch'ol merchants traded cacao and annatto in the encomienda towns of Verapaz in exchange for metal tools (particularly axes and machetes) and salt.

[nb 10] Nito was an important port for maritime trade that maintained strong links with places as far away as the province of Acalan in what is now southern Campeche in Mexico.

[54] The Manche Ch'ol generally lived in small villages or hamlets governed by one or more chieftains; they were less politically complex than their Lakandon and Itza neighbours, and were not ruled by a principal king or cheiftain.

"[56][nb 13] Notably, the highly specialised Manche Ch'ol production methods for annatto, cacao and vanilla were adopted by the incoming Qʼeqchiʼ and are still applied on a small scale in Alta Verapaz, Guatemala.