Lempira, also written Elempira in the 1558 service record of the soldier Rodrigo Ruiz, was a Lenca war leader of the Cerquín highlands of southwestern Honduras. The chronicler Antonio de Herrera relates that in 1537, at the charge of the paramount lord Entepica, he united some two hundred towns, including the Cares with whom his own people had been at war, and held the fortified Peñol de Cerquín against the Spaniards for about six months while the revolt spread through much of the province of Honduras-Higueras. Two traditions of his death survive: in Herrera's account he was treacherously shot with an arquebus during a feigned parley, whereas the probanza de méritos of Rodrigo Ruiz (Archivo General de Indias, Patronato 69, ramo 5), rediscovered and published by Mario Felipe Martínez Castillo, claims that Ruiz killed him in hand-to-hand combat and carried off his head. His name, traditionally interpreted as 'Lord of the Mountain', was given in 1926 to the national currency of Honduras and later to a department of the republic, and 20 July is kept as the Day of Lempira; among the modern Lenca he remains the emblematic ancestor-hero of indigenous resistance.