One of many peoples of pre-Columbian central Mexico, the Aztecs settled in the region of present-day Mexico City during the late 13th or early 14th century, and by the mid-15th century had risen to supremacy in the region, dominating most of their neighbors until their capital was destroyed by Spanish invaders in 1521.
It is difficult to chart the early history of the Aztecs with any certainty. Over many centuries Aztecs blended their history with origin mythology, rewriting their own story a number of times to reflect a belief in an Aztec manifest destiny as heirs of the Toltecs and rightful rulers of central Mexico. According to most versions of the origin story, the god Huitzilopochtli led his people, originally known as the Mexica, from their home at Aztlan into the Puebla-Tlaxcala valley of central Mexico.
Legend aside, the exact date of the Aztecs’ arrival in their eventual home is unclear, although they must have
Been there by the beginning of the 14th century. Groups already living in the region did little to make them welcome, partially because the newcomers had taken to raiding their neighbors for women, and the Aztecs soon found themselves at war. One of the indigenous groups, the Colhuacan, allowed the Aztecs to settle temporarily, living a degraded existence as serfs, but the Aztecs’ intractable nature soon caused their reluctant hosts to expel them. The Aztecs recommenced their wandering until they finally found some swampy and thus uninhabited islands and founded the twin cities of Tenochtitlan and Tlatelolco. Eventually the Aztecs drained the swamps for cultivation, making use of the “floating fields” known as chinampas.
In 1367 the Aztecs began to serve as mercenaries for the Tepanec kingdom of Azcapotzalco, probably the mightiest power on the mainland at that time. It was during this period that the leader of the Azcapotzalco, Tezozomoc, gave the Aztecs their first tlatoani, or “speaker,” named Acamapichtli (r. 1375-95), replacing the system of tribal administrative heads that had ruled up to that time. The ruler, later called the huei tlatoani (“great speaker”), acceded to power over a series of days or weeks, beginning with his election or selection after his successor’s death. The candidate had to prove himself in battle, leading captives for sacrifice back to the Aztec capital. He then would order new robes for all nobles who would be in attendance and issue invitations to neighboring nobles, including even traditional enemies. The populace marked the investiture of the new speaker with four to five days of feasting and dancing, culminating in a royal procession to five sacred sites in Tenochtitlan, where the new speaker offered sacrifices of incense and his own blood. Once finished, the speaker was considered semidivine (see Moctezuma II Xocoyotzin).
During the reign of Itzcoatl, beginning in 1427, the Aztecs became an independent nation, rebelling against the Tepanecs and destroying their capital. Itzcoatl was aided in this by Tlacacla, who served as his cihuacoatl (“woman snake”). Under their administration the Aztecs appropriated large tracts of land from nearby cities (many a part of the sphere of influence of the Aztecs’ former Tepanec patrons). Aztec warfare took on a new dimension during the reign of Moctezuma I Ilhuicamina (1440-69), “the elder,” with the introduction of the so-called flowery wars. These were battles staged not for killing or conquest, but in order that both sides might take captives for ritual sacrifice. In a related development, Tenochtitlan entered into an alliance with Texcoco and Tlacopan—this came to be known as the Triple Alliance—for the purpose of both mutual defense and for the waging of these sacrifice-oriented battles. Cannibalism may also have been a part of the religious observances, but only in ritual context: Aztecs commonly offered human hearts as sacrifices to their gods, but human flesh also served as a form of communion, or a means of consuming the essence of the divine.
With the help of their allies the Aztecs also launched an ambitious program of conquest. One of the greatest conquerors was the speaker Ahuitzotl (1486-1502) who, during his reign, expanded the Aztec domains to the present-day Guatemalan border, bringing most of central Mexico under Aztec rule, although large portions even within the very heart of the empire remained independent, including the enemy states of Tlaxcala, Huexotxingo, and CHOLULA. It should be noted that the Aztec Empire was not so much an empire of possessions in the sense of Western empires, but rather an economic empire based on the rendering of regular tribute payments. Still, the latter seems to have fostered no less resentment than the former would have—a situation that the CONQUiSTADORes took full advantage of upon their arrival.
The program of conquest continued down to the reign of Moctezuma II (r. 1502-20). Part of the reason for the Aztecs’ expansionist foreign policy lay in the sacrificial requirements of their gods, especially the cult of their patron god, Huitzilopochtli, but economic reasons also came into play. Tenochtitlan was unable to grow enough foodstuffs to feed its population, and, since it did not produce enough exports to pay for the foods in trade, the city’s residents had to obtain what they needed either by force or by levying tribute. Conquest soon became part of a vicious cycle: Warfare provided the goods and captives necessary for elaborate ceremonials to overawe their neighbors and for the sacrifices needed to propitiate the gods who ensured the Aztecs’ success in battle. But ceremony and sacrifice, as well as the ostentation that befitted the dominant power in the region, exhausted the treasury, necessitating further conquest.
Moctezuma II seems to have been the only ruler who attempted to move the Aztecs from a conquest-oriented military power into a stable, if autocratic, state. His efforts were largely dictated by the fact that the Aztecs had run out of territory into which they could profitably expand. Such a shift, however, would have required a restructuring of the Aztecs’ economy and society. Moctezuma’s attempts to do just that resulted in economic and social dislocations that seriously weakened the fabric of Aztec society and empire by the time Europeans first set foot upon the shores of Mexico in 1519.
Social Structure
The basic unit of Aztec social organization was the alte-petl, roughly equivalent to a city-state. These were in turn divided into calpulli, which formed the fundamental administrative structure of the empire. (The altepetl of Tenochtitlan was composed of about 20 calpulli.) Each calpulli was a network that included many indi-
An illustration from a reproduction of the Codex Magliabec-chi depicting an Aztec priest performing a sacrificial offering of a living human heart to the war god Huitzilopochtli
(Library of Congress) vidual households but was not, strictly speaking, a clan or extended kinship network, as a calpulli could include not only extended family but also families related by close proximity over a long period of time. The calpulli also spanned class lines, and elite members traditionally provided commoner members with either agricultural land or nonagrarian employment, in return for which the latter owed the former services tribute. Each calpulli also had its own gods and maintained its own temples. The members elected the principal chief, the calpullec, for life. The calpullec served as the main link between the calpulli and the altepetl: They retained high local prestige and were firmly tied to kinship networks within the calpulli, but their official authority came from the central bureaucracy. The calpulli also served as a medium for larger state enterprises, from monumental building projects to military service. Warrior contingents fought in calpulli groups, and, while individual achievement was the main motivator, group tallies of casualties and captives were a point of pride.
Aztec society after the reign of Moctezuma I was also divided into a strict social hierarchy, all physically signalled by elaborate sumptuary laws that reserved certain types of dress, ornamentation, and even housing types to particular classes. At the top were the teteuhctin, or high nobility, who ruled the towns and cities of the empire. The teteuhctin exercised legal powers and monitored the flow of tribute payments. Members of this class, which included the great speaker, can often be identified in records by the addition of the honorific suffix tzin to their personal names, although their contemporaries could identify them on sight by certain types of rich clothing and ornamentation, which it was solely their privilege to wear.
The pipiltin, or lesser nobility, provided the imperial administrators and were generally descended from lords of one sort or another. This class also included members of non-noble descent, the so-called eagle nobles (cuauh-pipiltin) who had risen from the ranks of the commoners by distinguishing themselves on the battlefield. Members of this class as a whole differed widely in wealth: Records at the time of the conquest show that certain pilli had only seven macehualtin (“commoners”) working under them, while some of the latter might be wealthy enough to employ a number of workers of their own. Despite their status, nobles did not enjoy a life of leisure. Rather, they formed a part of the military hierarchy and could be shamed and even stripped of privilege if they shirked their martial obligations. As a result, male children of the nobility received special military training at the hands of seasoned warriors. This education was especially important because success on the battlefield was usually the gateway to higher, nonmilitary office for nobles—an option only rarely open to warriors of less august background.
Merchants, or pochteca, held a high position in Aztec society and functioned as ambassadors, spies, and warriors in addition to their official position. The important role that they played in the expansion and economic domination of the Aztec state merited them special honors. Moctezuma II treated merchants as a branch of the nobility, and if one died on a mission, he was honored as a fallen warrior both by the living and in the afterlife. Membership in the pochteca was hereditary, and all members belonged to one of the twelve merchant guilds. Members of this class often became so prosperous that Aztec law forbade ostentatious displays of wealth lest they arouse the rulers’ jealousy. It should be noted that this was one of the few areas in which women were able to exercise semi-independent economic power. Although women were not permitted membership in any of the merchant guilds, they could and did trade by proxy and were agents of their male relatives’ goods in the latters’ absence.
The majority of the population, both in the city and in the countryside, were macehualtin, or commoners. Most of these worked lands belonging to wealthier members of their calpulli, although the families themselves maintained certain rights over the family plot provided that it did not lie uncultivated for two years or more.
At the bottom of the social hierarchy were the mayeque, semifree serfs who worked on the nobles’ estates. According to one estimate, this group constituted about 30 percent of the population of the empire. About one-third of the produce of their labor went to their lord. Their low status did not mean that they were always the poorest members of Aztec society. A member of this class might, through inheritance, become wealthier than most macehu-altin without any change in social status.
Slaves, or tlacohtin, are difficult to place in the socioeconomic hierarchy simply because their employment and consequent status depended on their skills. They might be purchased as agricultural labor, domestic servants, or even estate managers. Furthermore, because they could own property (including slaves of their own), some were able to become quite wealthy.
The Life Cycle
In all classes, birth was the point at which an Aztec’s destiny began to be laid out. A woman’s pregnancy was an affair for the whole community to celebrate, and birth was marked by family and neighborhood feasts and celebrations that could last for up to 15 days. The actual process of childbirth, by contrast, was a more private affair at which only women were present. After the midwife cut the umbilical cord, she recited a speech to the newborn, stressing the new arrival’s obligations and place in society: Boys were instructed in their mission to provide sacrifices for the gods, while girls were admonished to keep a good home. Gender roles were emphasized again at a later ceremony, when baby boys were given miniature weapons, girls miniature brooms and weaving implements.
Children of both sexes received formal education beginning at about age 15 and lasting for five years, or until they were of marriageable age. Children of the nobility and sometimes pochteca children attended sex-segregated classes in the calmecac, in which priests instructed them in all aspects of Aztec religion and history. Education in one of these institutions was a prerequisite to holding any high administrative appointment or to going on to the tlamacazcalli, a kind of seminary for those who wished to enter the priesthood. Less well-heeled children attended the tlepochcalli, a military academy aimed at training male students to be warriors, while girls seem to have studied song, dance, and embroidery.
Families, rather than young couples, usually arranged marriages via matchmakers. Marriage seems to have occurred at age 20 for boys and slightly younger for girls, with the expectation that one would marry another member of one’s own calpulli. Both the bride’s family and the groom’s schoolmasters had to give approval to the match. The ritual banquet took place in the home of the bride’s family, after which she was borne to the groom’s family home, where the couple would make their residence.
For women, at least, marriage marked a passage to adulthood. Book six of the Florentine Codex admonished the future bride to “regard one with respect, speak well, greet one well. . . Do not reject us, do not embarrass us as old men, do not reject thy mothers as old women.” It should be noted that men could take as many secondary wives or concubines as they could afford to support. While in practical terms this meant that most commoners probably had only one wife, great lords had dozens or sometimes even hundreds.
For young men the passage into adulthood was marked not by marriage but by the taking of a first captive in battle, often a prerequisite to marriage. Boys’ indoctrination into the warrior ethic of Aztec society began in earnest in the “House of Youth,” a sort of youth auxiliary to the more formal academies they would attend when older. Beginning around age six or seven, they began to learn songs and dances telling of the glory of war in general and of their own calpulli’s warriors in particular. By the time they entered into formal weapons training around age 15, they had gained a firm sense of the importance of warfare both to the individual and the community. At about 18 years of age novice warriors ventured onto the field of battle for the first time, although only to observe a seasoned warrior with whom they had been paired. On their second foray they were expected to take a captive, although on this occasion they might make the capture a group effort of up to six novice warriors. Increased status marked this first capture, and additional privileges came with additional captures. Theoretically, at least, these privileges included the possibility of elevation to a branch of nobility distinct from the hereditary nobles, with the right to privileges and visible markers of status not allowed to commoners, but excluding the insignia and many of the privileges of those born nobles.
Aztecs, like most Mesoamerican cultures, believed that death and life existed in complementary opposition. For example, deceased ancestors could exert influence on the living, ranging from sending diseases to interceding with the gods. The Aztecs often held festivals to honor the dead, and the living could communicate with ancestors via offerings of food and flowers. (After the conquest, DiEGO Duran noted with some concern that certain aspects of these festivals persisted during the Catholic holidays of All Saints’ and All Souls’.) Afterlife destination depended not on individual behavior but rather on social status and/or manner of death. Warriors who died on the battlefield and women who died in childbirth were the only ones guaranteed a happy afterlife. Most people had to undertake a more arduous journey before attaining their final rest. The underworld was made up of eight layers under the earth, each offering different hazards, such as clashing mountains, obsidian-edged winds, and sacrifice by arrow or by heart removal. The deepest of the nether regions was Mictlan, which the Spanish conquerors identified with the Christian hell. To aid their departed relatives in their arduous pilgrimages, families of the deceased provided them not only with provisions but also with valuables that might speed their journey, such as cacao beans, jade beads, and frothed hot chocolate.
Religion
Religion permeated all aspects of the Aztecs’ existence, as it did for other peoples in the Atlantic world. In Central America indigenous peoples often shared certain religious ideals or deities. Most of the gods of the Aztec pantheon, for example, had adherents among the Maya, OLMECS, and the civilization at Teotihuacan,
The cyclical nature of life was reflected in the cycle of the Aztec calendar: 20 day names and 13 day numbers, yielding a total of 260 combinations. Also, a solar calendar of 365 days was used, divided into 20 numbered-day months and ending in five “unlucky days.” For all possible permutations of the combined calendars to exhaust themselves required 52 years, terminating in a dangerous five-day period in which the gods might choose to destroy the world, then in its fifth cycle, and begin a new cycle. Recognizing their good fortune at having escaped calamity, the Aztecs created the “new fire ceremony” dedicated to the god Xiutecuhtli.
The End of E-mpire
Only a few years after a new fire ceremony in Tenochtitlan the destruction of the Aztec empire actually occurred, but at the hands of the Spanish rather than the gods. After sending two exploratory missions to the coast of Mexico, the governor of Cuba, DiEGO DE Velazquez, sent Hernan Cortes on a mission to trade and explore in Mexico as well as to make a settlement on the coast of Mexico that Velazquez could claim as his own. Cortes’s 11 ships sailed from Cuba in February 1519 with a force of 600 fighting men, 200 Native servants, 16 HORSES, 32 crossbows, 13 muskets, and 14 mobile cannon, landing in March on the coast of the Tabasco region. He defeated local Natives in a quick skirmish, securing both an alliance and tribute that included the slave woman Malinche, who would later become invaluable as Cortes’s interpreter and informant on local affairs. Soon thereafter, Cortes dropped any pretense that his mission was a peaceful one or that he was operating under the orders of Velazquez and embarked on a program of conquest.
Moctezuma II had by this time received word of the new arrivals and sent emissaries to greet them, possibly suspecting that Cortes or one of his entourage was the incarnation of the god QuETZALCOATL. It is likely that any such belief gave way as the invaders marched toward Tenochtitlan, conquering cities along the way, including Quetzalcoatl’s cult center, Cholula, where they staged a mass slaughter of the resident nobles and warriors. After the now-intimidated Moctezuma failed in his attempts to deter them by gifts, blandishments, and even sorcery, the Spaniards entered Tenochtitlan, where Moctezuma allowed himself to be taken captive.
The tide was soon to turn in the Aztecs’ favor, though only briefly. In the spring of 1520 Cortes received word that
Diego Velazquez, angered that his deputy had exceeded his authority, had sent a detachment to bring Cortes back to Cuba. In his absence, he left Pedro de Alvarado in charge. This temporary leader of the occupying forces, fearing an uprising at a religious observance incorporating several Aztec nobles and warriors, led the Spanish troops in what must have seemed to the inhabitants an unprovoked massacre of the city’s civil and military leadership. Alvarado’s action provoked an uprising that the occupying forces were hard-pressed to keep under control. By the time Cortes returned to the city with reinforcements won over from the troops sent to detain him, he faced a sullen population who refused to sell provisions to the Spaniards (much less provide them for free at Moctezuma’s orders) and who continued to riot, now convinced of the necessity of expelling the invaders. The opposition even went so far as to elect another speaker in Moctezuma’s place, CuiTLAHUAC, provided he could drive the Spaniards out of the city. A desperate Cortes prevailed upon Moctezuma to address his people and order them to resume trading with his troops, but the population of Tenochtitlan, now under the banner of Cuitlahuac, rejected their former leader’s appeal and pelted him with stones, inflicting wounds from which he apparently later died.
The Aztecs’ rebellion began in earnest on June 25, 1520. Cutting off the bridges within the causeways, they trapped the Spanish within the city. By June 29 Cortes and his men were trapped in the palace with no food and were losing men every time one of them tried to escape. On June 30, a night that Spanish chroniclers would remember as the Noche Triste (“Sad Night”), Cortes made portable bridges to traverse the eight spans of the TACUBA causeway and let his men help themselves to the GOLD, which they stuffed into their armor and helmets before making an attempt to escape the city, but only half had crossed the first gap before their Aztec pursuers destroyed their makeshift bridge, trapping most of the Spanish troops either in the city or only partway across the causeway. In the rest of the fighting that night, half the soldiers were killed or drowned, weighted down by plundered gold.
Cortes and his decimated forces were to have the final word (see Documents). About the time that the Aztecs were driving out the Spaniards, SMALLPOX, a DISEASE inadvertently brought by the invaders, began to rage through the densely populated city. Within months smallpox had claimed the lives of a large percentage of the population, including the new speaker, Cuitlahuac. Cortes later returned in April 1521 and laid siege to the city, now weakened and depopulated.
Cortes’s conquest became one of the defining moments in the European colonization of the Americas. Surviving accounts make it difficult to imagine the brutality of the Spaniards’ crusade. During one fiesta, according to one of the surviving indigenous chronicles, “the Spaniards were seized with an urge to kill the celebrants.” They entered the temple in Tenochtitlan and attacked those gathered for a ceremony. “They attacked all the celebrants,” the anonymous chronicler continued, “stabbing them, spearing them, striking them with their swords. They attacked some of them from behind, and these fell instantly to the ground with their entrails hanging out. Others they beheaded: they cut off their heads, or split their heads to pieces.” The con-quistadores killed with a frenzy that can still be felt in the words of the chronicler: “The blood of the warriors flowed like water and gathered into pools. The pools widened, and the stench of blood and entrails filled the air. The Spaniards ran into the communal houses to kill those who were hiding. They ran everywhere and searched everywhere; they invaded every room, hunting and killing.”
Given the surviving testimony, it is difficult to image that Cortes had once expressed admiration for the Aztecs and especially their capital. His description of the city emphasized the sophistication of its architecture and the complexity of its economy. “This city has many squares,” he wrote, “where trading is done and markets are held continuously. There is also one square twice as big as that of Salamanca, with arcades all around, where more than sixty thousand people come each day to buy and sell, and where every kind of merchandise produced in these lands is found; provisions as well as ornaments of gold and silver, lead, brass, copper, tin, stones, shells, bones, and feathers.” He marveled at those who sold building supplies and others who proffered a wide range of poultry and game. Merchants who sold particular goods concentrated in one part of the city or another, a practice that could be found in European cities as well as in the early modern era. He stood in awe of the city’s principal temple, “whose great size and magnificence no human tongue could describe, for it is so large that within the precincts, which are surrounded by a very high wall, a town of some five hundred inhabitants could easily be built.”
Yet despite his admiration for what he had seen, the conquest of Mexico that Cortes led had permanent consequences for the Aztecs. By July 1521, the population of Tenochtitlan, which stood at 200,000 before the Spanish arrived, had been reduced to 60,000 starved survivors who had no choice but to surrender to the conquistadores.
Further reading: Contemporary accounts of the Aztecs include Bernal Diaz del Castillo, The True History of the Conquest of New Spain, trans. A. P. Maudslay (orig. published in 1908-10; repr. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1956); Hernan Cortes, Letters from Mexico, trans. Anthony Pagden (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1986); Diego Duran, The History of the Indies of New Spain, trans. Doris Heyden (Norman: University of
Oklahoma Press, 1995); and Fray Bernardino de Sahagun, General History of the Things of New Spain, trans. Arthus J. O. Anderson and Charles E. Dibble, 13 vols. (Santa Fe: School of American Research and University of Utah, 1950-1982). For an account from the Aztec point of view, see Miguel Leon-Portilla, ed., The Broken Spears: The Aztec Account of the Conquest of Mexico, trans. Lysander Kemp (Boston: Beacon Press, 1961). General works on the subject include Michael Coe, Mexico: From the Olmecs to the Aztecs, 4th ed. (London: Thames & Hudson, 1994) and Nigel Davies, The Aztec Empire: The Toltec Resurgence (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1987). For an analysis of Aztec society and culture, see Inga Clendinnen, Aztecs: An Interpretation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991). For Aztec religion, see Kay Almere Read, Time and Sacrifice in the Aztec Cosmos (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998), and Mary Miller and Karl Taube, The Gods and Symbols of Ancient Mexico and the Maya: An Illustrated Dictionary of Mesoamerican Religion (London: Thames & Hudson, 1993).
—Marie A. Kelleher
World History
