The Huastec  or Teenek (contraction of Te' Inik, "people from here"; also known as Huaxtec, Wastek or Huastecos), are an indigenous people of Mexico, living in the La Huasteca region including the states of Hidalgo, Veracruz, San Luis Potosi and Tamaulipas concentrated along the route of the Panuco River and along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. There are approximately 66,000 Huastec speakers today, of which two-thirds are in San Luis Potosi and one-third in Veracruz, although their population was probably much higher, as much as half a million, when the Spanish arrived in 1529. The ancient Huastec civilization is one of the pre-Columbian Mesoamerican cultures. Judging from archaeological remains, they are thought to date back to approximately the 10th century BCE, although their most productive period of civilization is usually considered to be the Postclassic era between the fall of Teotihuacan and the rise of the Aztec Empire.
Huastec arrival in the Huasteca region
The Huasteca region of Mexico extends from the easternmost limestone ranges of the Sierra Madre Oriental, across the coastal plain and the Otontepec hills to the Gulf of Mexico, in northern Veracruz state, eastern San Luis Potosi state, and (by some definitions) southern Tamaulipas. At least three indigenous languages are spoken in parts of the region today: Nahuatl (a Uto-Aztecan language), spoken especially in Veracruz, but also in San Luis Potosi; Pame (an Oto-Manguean language). spoken in the hilly borderlands of San Luis Potosi and Queretaro; and Huastec (Wastek) (a Maya language), spoken in San Luis Potosi and northernmost Veracruz, and formerly in Tamaulipas. Some would include the Totonac-speaking area, in north-central Veracruz, as part of the Huasteca. The Huastec region was known to the Aztecs (ancestors of today's Nahuatl speakers, who arrived in the Huasteca around 1450) for its fertile abundance, and includes the northernmost patches of tropical moist forest and cloud forest in the Americas.  The Huastecs arrived in the Huasteca between 1500 BCE and 900 BCE. The linguistic evidence is corroborated by archaeological discoveries. In 1954, Richard Stockton MacNeish found ceramics and figurines in the Middle Formative period, called "Pavon de Panuco" in the Panuco River sites of the Huasteca, which resemble Preclassic objects from Uaxactun, a Peten-region Maya site. A date of no earlier than 1100 BCE for the Huastecs' arrival at their present location seems most likely, since they probably had not arrived at the north-central Veracruz site of Santa Luisa until about 1200 BCE, the phase at the end of the Early Formative period known locally as the "Ojite phase." Artifacts of the period include Panuco-like basalt manos and metates. (The Huastecs remained in Santa Luisa, located east of Papantla near the Gulf coast, until supplanted or absorbed by the Totonacs around AD 1000).  One nexus of carved iconographic traditions, the "yoke-palm-axe" complex, was found from Jaina Island in coastal Campeche to the Huasteca (and in between, in Aparicio, Veracruz), in association with the pelota ballgame, decapitation, and tooth mutilation; however, this may reflect coastal trade contacts after the Huastecs were established in the Huasteca.

Q: what made them split from the maya?
A: Panuco River sites of the Huasteca, which resemble Preclassic objects from Uaxactun, a Peten-region Maya site.

Q: what year did they leave?
A: Huastecs arrived in the Huasteca between 1500 BCE and 900 BCE.
did they try to escape war?
unknown
unknown