The Pipil are an indigenous group of Mesoamerican people inhabiting the western and central areas of present-day El Salvador.

[2] Indigenous accounts recorded by Spanish chronicler Gonzalo Francisco de Oviedo suggest that the Pipil of El Salvador migrated from present-day Mexico to their current locations beginning around the 8th century A.D.

After a short period of time, they then travelled southwards through the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, ending their journey on the Balsam Coast of El Salvador.

[3] As they settled in the area, they founded the city-state of Kūskatan, which was already home to various groups including the Lenca, Xinca, Ch'orti', and Poqomam.

[4] They were also competent workers in cotton textiles and developed a wide-ranging trade network for woven goods as well as agricultural products.

Their cultivation of cacao, centered in the Izalco area and involving a vast and sophisticated irrigation system, was especially lucrative, and trade reached as far north as Teotihuacan and south to Costa Rica.

This may be the reason that archeological evidence of continuous Pipil occupation is lacking compared to other cultures that had more permanent stays in the same areas.

[5] When their presence was documented by the Spanish in the 16th century, they were identified as "Pipil" and located in the present areas of western El Salvador, as well as south-eastern Guatemala.

[6] Archaeologist William Fowler notes that the term Pipil can be translated as 'noble' and surmises that the invading Spanish and their Indian auxiliaries, the Tlaxcala, used the name as a reference to the population's elite, known as the Pipiltin.

For most authors, the term Pipil or Nawat (Nahuat) is used to refer to the language in Central America only (i.e., excluding Mexico).

However, the term (along with the synonymous Eastern Nahuatl) has also been used to refer to Nahuan language varieties in the southern Mexican states of Veracruz, Tabasco, and Chiapas, that, like the Nawat in El Salvador, have reduced the earlier /tl/ sound to a /t/.

This event caused many Indigenous Salvadorans who survived to stop passing on their Native language, traditions, and other cultural practices to their descendants.

He was accompanied by thousands of Tlaxcala and Cakchiquel allies, who had long been rivals of Cuzcatlan for control over their wealthy cacao-producing region.

Settling mostly in the western side of El Salvador they incorporated the Indigenous populations into their new social and political order.

The dense, grid plan city was ruled by the Spanish, but many Pipil living there made a life in which they continued to keep in touch with their indigenous customs.

[10] For the Pipil population that stayed inside the Spanish rule they were forced to stop native crop cultivate and start farming Cacao.

Escamilla Rodriguez has asserted that to a certain extent, the early pipil sites studied on the Balsam coast of El Salvador were changed and appropriated by the settlers as part of a diasporic migration process, maintaining their identities through alteration of their landscape.

Analysis showed how even though the pottery created by the Pipil artists was ornamented with traditional indigenous decoration, the forms of the pieces themselves were frequently European.

Archaeologists analyzing Pipil writings have discovered strong emphasis on currency and commodity, pointing towards an economically advanced pre-colonial culture.

[15] In 1881 there were several small rebellions launched, after the El Salvadorean government passed a decree that abolished the ejido system and the tieras comunales.

[17] Popular accounts of the Nahua have had a strong influence on the national oral histories of El Salvador, with a large portion of the population claiming ancestry from the Pipil and other groups.

Remaining self-identified El Salvadorian native cultures other than the Pipil include the Lenca, Pokoman, Chorti, and Ulva peoples.

In this time period archeologists and anthropologists called the Indigenous peoples of El Salvador an Invisible population similar to how blacks were treated in the US.

[9] According to a special report in El Diario de Hoy, due to preservation and revitalization efforts of various non-profit organizations in conjunction with several universities, combined with a post-civil war resurgence of Nahua identity in the country of El Salvador, the number of Nawat speakers rose from 200 in the 1980s to 3,000 speakers in 2009.