Eventually the inhabitants of Tenochtitlan, who called themselves Tenochca, conquered Tlatelolco. Tenochtitlan rapidly expanded. The Tenochca actually created new land to farm and build on by anchoring wicker baskets to Lake Texcoco’s shallow bottom and piling silt and plant matter on top of them, thus making chinampas, artificial islands.
The Tenochca formed an alliance with a people called the Alcohua against other peoples of central Mexico. They took a new name too. They began to call themselves Aztec after Aztlan, their legendary homeland.
In the following years, Tenochtitlan grew on top of the chinampas to a city of thousands of stone buildings, interconnected by numerous canals, with about 200,000 inhabitants. This population center is the site of present-day Mexico City, one of the largest cities in the world.
The Aztec launched many military campaigns against surrounding peoples, from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific Ocean. Aztec armies were well organized and well armed. They used bows and arrows, darts and dart throwers, clubs, maces, and swords with blades of volcanic glass. Thick, quilted cotton was used to make shields as well as armor. Through conquest, the Aztec Empire came to comprise 5 million people.
The Aztec conquered their neighbors for economic purposes. They imposed taxes on their subjects, taking raw materials from them (such as gold, silver, copper, jade, turquoise, obsidian [black volcanic glass], and pearls), as well as food products (such as corn, beans, squash, tomatoes, potatoes, chili peppers, mangoes, papayas, avoca-does, and cacao, or chocolate). They also demanded cotton for clothing and for armor, and domesticated animals, such as dogs and turkeys, for meat.
World History
