The founding of Tututepec is bound to one of Mesoamerica's most documented individuals: Eight Deer Jaguar Claw, a Mixtec lord whose exploits are recorded across multiple pre-Columbian codices including the Codex Bodley, the Codex Zouche-Nuttall, and the Codex Colombino. In the late 11th century, Eight Deer established Tututepec as a base on the Pacific coast, expanding Mixtec power from the highland valleys down to the fertile lowlands and the sea. The move was strategic - the coast offered cotton, cacao, salt, and maritime trade routes unavailable in the mountains. At its largest, the archaeological site covered some 21.85 square kilometers. Eight Deer eventually relocated his capital to Tilantongo in the highlands, and Tututepec drops from the codex record after his departure. But the city he planted on the coast did not wither. It grew into something he may not have anticipated: an independent empire.

By the Late Postclassic period, roughly the 12th through early 16th centuries, Tututepec had evolved into a major tributary state. The empire's economic engine ran on cotton - spindle whorls found in excavated residences and early colonial sources confirm the city was a significant cotton exporter. Highland states craved the fiber, and Tututepec traded it for obsidian, the volcanic glass that made sharper blades than local chert. A linguistic study by Katheryn Josserand suggests the coastal Mixtec dialect diverged from the highland dialect by the 11th century, supporting the theory of a distinct Mixtec migration to the coast during that period. Archaeological evidence, published by Arthur Joyce in 2004, reveals that even commoner households contained trade goods manufactured elsewhere, meaning ordinary people participated in long-distance commerce - not just elites. Commoners also had greater access to polychrome ceramics than their highland counterparts, ceramics decorated with eagle and smoke volute motifs representing war and sacrifice, suggesting broad popular support for the state's expansionist ideology.

Tututepec's relationship with the Aztec Empire operated in a gray zone between rivalry and avoidance. The two empires never fought each other directly, but they clashed through proxies. When the Aztecs expanded into Oaxaca, Tututepec's northward growth halted. The Aztecs aided border communities like Coatlan in defending against Mixtec pressure, while Tututepec sent soldiers to Yanhuitlan to support its defense against Aztec aggression. The economic war was subtler. After the Aztecs seized the obsidian mines at Pachuca, Tututepec - which had relied heavily on Pachuca obsidian - reduced its imports from those mines, apparently unwilling to trade with a rival empire even for a critical resource. Francisco Burgoa's colonial-era records mention a neutral marketplace in Putla where Tututepec operated beyond its own borders, suggesting the empire maintained commercial channels carefully calibrated to avoid dependence on its powerful neighbor to the north.

Tututepec's end came swiftly. After the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire, Hernan Cortes sent his lieutenant Pedro de Alvarado south along the coast in January 1522, accompanied by Zapotec allies from Tehuantepec. Alvarado arrived in Tututepec in February and was received in the city's core - initially as a guest, in the diplomatic tradition of Mesoamerican protocol. By March 4, the visit had become a conquest. The Spanish captured the Mixtec ruler Coaxintecuhtli and extorted 30,000 pesos' worth of gold from the city before leaving the ruler to die in captivity. An empire that had held the Aztecs at bay for generations fell to a handful of Spanish soldiers and their indigenous allies in a matter of weeks. Today, the archaeological remains lie beneath the modern town. Farmers plow fields above buried palaces, and the bird on the hill exists only in the codices that preserved a name both conqueror and conquered understood the same way.