Sacapulas and Aguacatan were highly desirable areas over which to exercise control. Both were situated in tierra templada country that provided the Quiche with a variety of foodstuffs not available in their tierra fria heartland. They also were associated with valuable natural resources. Sacapulas was an important salt-producing centre and the closest such source to Gumarcaah, and Aguacatan seems to have been connected with the supply of gems and precious metals. Salt, a commodity that in pre-Columbian times served along with cacao and chile as a medium of exchange, was probably produced from the mineral springs at Sacapulas by the same primitive process of evaporation and leaching that is employed today. There is, however, a strong suggestion that the Quiche used the forced labour of prisoners of war in the exploitation of Sacapulas salt. This situation is indicated in an account by the Spanish governor of Verapaz, Martin Alfonso Tovilla, who visited Sacapulas in the early seventeenth century:

This town in ancient aboriginal times served as a jail or prison, where the Quiche kings, to whom these lands belonged, enclosed the captives from the wars which they continually had with their neighbours, because these Quiche kings were very powerful. Every night they put the captives in a kind of rock pen which was very large, and by day they made them go to the salt factory, where they made much salt, and it was of great importance to their king. Because of this factory and the scarcity of salt, [the Quiche] king was more powerful than his neighbours.