to Honduras. He reported that the houses of the city were still in excellent condition; his account was the last description of the city while it was still inhabitable. The Spanish founded a new town at nearby Tecpán Guatemala; Tecpán is Nahuatl for "palace", thus the name of the new town translated as "the palace among the trees". The Spanish abandoned Tecpán in 1527, because of the continuous Kaqchikel attacks, and moved to the Almolonga Valley to the east, refounding their capital on the site of today's San Miguel Escobar district of Ciudad Vieja, near Antigua Guatemala. The Nahua and Oaxacan allies of the Spanish settled in what is now central Ciudad Vieja, then known as Almolonga (not to be confused with Almolonga near Quetzaltenango); Zapotec and Mixtec allies also settled San Gaspar Vivar about northeast of Almolonga, which they founded in 1530. The Kaqchikel kept up resistance against the Spanish for a number of years, but on 9 May 1530, exhausted by the warfare that had seen the deaths of their best warriors and the enforced abandonment of their crops, the two kings of the most important clans returned from the wilds. A day later they were joined by many nobles and their families and many more people; they then surrendered at the new Spanish capital at Ciudad Vieja. The former inhabitants of Iximche were dispersed; some were moved to Tecpán, the rest to Sololá and other towns around Lake Atitlán. Siege of Zaculeu Although a state of hostilities existed between the Mam and the Kʼicheʼ of Qʼumarkaj after the rebellion of the Kaqchikel against their former Kʼicheʼ allies prior to European contact, when the conquistadors arrived there was a shift in the political landscape. Pedro de Alvarado described how the Mam king Kaybʼil Bʼalam was received with great honour in Qʼumarkaj while he was there. The expedition against Zaculeu was apparently initiated after Kʼicheʼ bitterness at their failure to contain the Spanish at Qʼumarkaj, with the plan to trap the conquistadors in the city having been suggested to them by the Mam king, Kaybʼil Bʼalam; the resulting execution of the Kʼicheʼ kings was viewed as unjust. The Kʼicheʼ suggestion of marching on the Mam was quickly taken up by the Spanish. At the time of the conquest, the main Mam population was situated in Xinabahul (also spelled Chinabjul), now the city of Huehuetenango, but Zaculeu's fortifications led to