I haven't read his Relation in quite some time, so my recollection might be flawed, but I do remember this. CdV's party was advised by friendly natives that Indians further south along the coast were hostile and it was a bad idea to go that way. The first city they would reach that way was Veracruz, very far down the coast. The route they did take was almost certainly less populous than the coast.

There's a translated version of the book through archive.org. I'll try to find the actual passage I'm referring to later today.