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Chapter 11

People of the Pleiades: The Aztec Interlude

FROM TULA TO TENOCHTITLAN

Perhaps the most eloquent testimony to the geographic
diffusion of the calendar by the Toltecs is the fact that we have
indisputable evidence of its presence in the far reaches of western
Mexico by at least the early decades of the twelfth century. As the
Codex Botturini makes abundantly clear, when the Aztecs began the
migration which took them from their homeland in the marshes of Aztlán
to the small rocky islets in Lake Texcoco, which ultimately became the
spectacular capital city of the vastest indigenous empire Mesoamerica
was ever to know, each move along the way was documented both in space
and in time. Whereas the identification of many of the place-names
they used can only be guessed at (e.g., "place of the sand spider," or
"place where spear-throwers are made"), the temporal sequence of the
events which transpired can be precisely pinned down year by year.

The Aztecs record that their departure from their island
home (subsequently identified as Mexcaltitán on the coast of Nayarit)
occurred in the year "1 Flint-Knife." Because they already knew the
significance of the "binding of the years" ceremony, they celebrated
four such events in the years "2 Reed" while en route. Four years
after the last celebration -- in the year "6 Reed" -- the narrative
ends abruptly, due to the Codex Botturini having been damaged. Yet,
from the evidence at hand, it is obvious that their migration took
some 187 years to complete. This is because there are 27 years between
"1 Flint-Knife" and the first occurrence of "2 Reed," and 52 years
between each recurrence of a year of that name, followed by four
additional years -- i.e., 27 + 52 x 3 = 27 + 156 = 183 + 4 = 187.
Inasmuch as their arrival in the Valley of Mexico is known to have
taken place about the beginning of the fourteenth century, this would
mean that their departure date was most probably in the year 1116.

Ironically, most of the ancient native accounts herald the
beginning of the Chichimec period with the next time the year "1
Flint-Knife" occurred -- i.e., 52 years later in 1168. This is because
earlier in the decade, Tula, the capital of the Toltecs, had been
overrun by barbarian Chichimecs and put to the torch. In the Codex
Botturini the Aztecs record that they had left the "place of the
reeds," or Tula, in the year 1163, so there is strong circumstantial
evidence that it was the Aztecs themselves who had been the culprits.
just as the Toltecs had been the undoing of Teotihuacán, so the Aztecs
appear to have been responsible for bringing down the remnants of the
first Nahua civilization on the Mexican plateau.

Ultimately, the irony was to become even greater, for once
they became fully aware of what they had done, the Aztecs revived the
memory of the Toltecs as the greatest people who had ever lived. They
were heralded as the first people who had learned to count, the first
to understand the movements of the sun and to measure the passage of
time, and the most consummate artisans who had ever molded clay or
worked in feathers or textiles. Indeed, the highest compliment an
Aztec could pay to anyone was to liken him to a Toltec!

As might have been expected, the Aztec migration
essentially followed the line of least resistance. This was the
corridor afforded by the Río Grande de Santiago, Mexico's
second-largest Pacific-flowing river, and by its major tributary, the
Lerma, whose headwaters rise in the highland basin of Toluca, some 100
km (60 mi) to the west of the Valley of Mexico. The basin of Toluca,
however, was not an especially attractive goal in its own right, for
it was the loftiest of all the intermontane basins of the Mexican
plateau. With an elevation of 2640 m (8660 ft), it was both cold and
arid compared to the Valley of Mexico just over the next mountain
ridge to the east. Moreover, in the middle course of the Rio Lerma,
the Aztecs most probably ran afoul of the Purépecha, or Tarascans, and
therefore may have been obliged to detour north and eastward along the
valley of the Río Túrbio instead, thus ending up in the open plains to
the north of Tula. On the other hand, it is just as likely that the
urban metropolis of the Toltecs was their goal from the outset, and
that they had moved upstream toward it as directly as they could. In
any event, as the Codex Botturini informs us, the Aztecs had reached
Tula by the year 1145 and did not depart until 1163.

Whereas the place-name evidence indicates that the first
phase of the Aztec migration had brought them into what is now the
state of Hidalgo, most of the places mentioned in the second phase of
their account have been identified with localities in the present
state of México. At the close of this second phase, they had reached
Chapultepec, on the western outskirts of modern Mexico City, and
celebrated their fourth "binding of the years" ceremony in 1299. Of
the third and final phase of their migration, all of which focused on
the Valley of Mexico, only the fragmentary record of four years
remains, though it is generally agreed that the actual founding of
Tenochtitlán can be assigned to the year 1325.

The Valley of Mexico not only lay some 400 m (1300 ft)
lower than that of Toluca, and thus enjoyed a somewhat more temperate
climate, but it also embraced the largest body of water on the entire
Mexican plateau -- a feature sometimes known as the Lake of the Moon.
Although it consisted of basically one extensive articulated basin, it
had three major components, partially separated from one another by
higher ridges of land which formed irregular peninsulas. The
southernmost arm of the body of water was known as Lake Chalco,
whereas the largest and most central portion was known as Lake
Texcoco, and the northern arm was called Lake Xaltocán. The marshes
along the edges of the lake had very early come to be appreciated for
their abundance of waterfowl and for such aquatic animals as the
axolotl, a large salamander which was esteemed for its flesh.

Technically, the Lake of the Moon was what the
geomorphologist calls a playa lake. As such, it was chiefly fed by
run-off from the adjacent mountains, and therefore it was seldom very
deep. Depending upon the amount of summer rainfall received, the lake
was often very irregular in volume and in shape as well. Naturally,
the longer the dry season continued, the more the water evaporated and
the more the lake's shorelines contracted. At the same time, the
brackishness of the water increased as the proportion of dissolved
salts in the remaining water rose toward the saturation point and then
began to crystallize out in the form of salt pans along the edges of
the lake.

Had the Lake of the Moon been a classic playa lake, it
would, of course, never have been the magnet for human settlement that
it actually was. This is because, in addition to the summer run-off,
its water supply was augmented by seepages of groundwater out of the
volcanic formations on the south and especially the southwest sides of
the lake. Because this water had percolated through lava rather than
through limestone it contained little or no dissolved salts and was
therefore fresh rather than brackish. Indeed, having been filtered
through the volcanic formations, it was also cold, clear, and pure, so
a more fortuitous combination of circumstances can scarcely be
imagined -a plentiful supply of water on the very edge of a
semi-desert basin. (The Aztec glyph for Chapultepec very pointedly
depicts the flow of water from beneath the mountain.)

Unlike typical playa lakes in other of the highland basins
of the Mexican plateau, the Lake of the Moon had drawn settlers to its
shores through all of human history. We know, for example, that
prehistoric man was hunting mastodons on the shores of the lake at
Tepexpán as early as 9000 B.C., and we have already spoken of the
first agricultural villages of El Arbolillo and Zacatenco dating to
about 1500 B.C. The earliest Olmec-inspired settlements at Tlatilco,
Tlapacoya, and Cuicuilco were sited near the western and southern
edges of the lake as well, perhaps at least in part because the
freshest waters of the lake were to be found in these quadrants.
Certainly by the time the Aztecs arrived in the Valley of Mexico in
the late thirteenth century, all of the best land surrounding the lake
had long since been occupied. Indeed, at the time of their arrival,
the western, southern, and eastern shores of the lake had been
consolidated into the three distinct kingdoms of Atzcapotzalco,
Culhuacán, and Coatlinchán, respectively, so it was into this
political constellation that these newly arrived barbarians from the
west intruded at the beginnings of the fourteenth century.

Needless to say, the Aztecs were not particularly welcome
in the already relatively densely settled Valley of Mexico, for it was
all the local inhabitants could do to feed themselves in this marginal
semiarid upland environment. According to the Aztecs' own tribal
legend, the god of war, Huitzilopochtli, had promised that their
migration would be over when they found an eagle with a rattlesnake in
its beak sitting on a cactus on a small rocky island -- surely a
combination of signs that they would not be likely to miss. Perhaps it
was this augury which led them to look in the middle of the Lake of
the Moon for their "promised land." On the other hand, another version
of their arrival in the basin of Mexico states that when they asked
for land on which to settle, they were offered a couple of small rocky
islets in the middle of the lake roughly equidistant from each of the
existing cities --essentially a no-man's land inhabited only by
rattlesnakes and scorpions. Indeed, it has been suggested that this
was done in the hope that the latter would make short work of the
Aztecs, but apparently the willingness of a starving Chichimec to eat
almost anything had probably been overlooked. In any case, to acquire
sufficient land on which to settle, the Aztecs set about driving
stakes into the shallow lake bottom and then scooping up mud and
stones to build out the perimeters of their islands, much as they
witnessed had been done in the heavily cultivated chinampas (sometimes
erroneously referred to as "floating gardens") around Xochimilco at
the south end of the lake. Thus, with an immense input of arduous and
disciplined labor, the Aztecs gradually transformed the little rocky
islands of Tenochtitlán and Tlatelolco into the nuclei of two
intensely cultivated garden cities, the former serving as their
religious and political nerve center while the latter increasingly
took on the functions of a busy marketplace.

It should be noted in passing that whatever scenario one
prefers for the founding of the Aztec capital, its siting had nothing
to do with such concerns as solsticial orientation. There was no real
choice as to where the city should be located, for its foundations
were fixed by the geographic "accident" of the two little islands in
the middle of a lake in which none of the original inhabitants of the
Valley of Mexico had any interest or saw any value. It was an
extremely difficult site on which to build any kind of a permanent
settlement, but once the city had begun to take shape the advantages
of its location gradually became increasingly apparent. From a
commercial standpoint it was easily accessible to water craft carrying
foodstuffs and other bulky supplies from the adjacent shores of the
lake, and from a military standpoint it was sufficiently buffered by
the surrounding expanses of water to enjoy a very defensible location.
Therefore, although Tenochtitlán possessed none of the astronomical
significance of many earlier Mesoamerican ceremonial centers, what was
initially a very difficult site was ultimately transformed into a
central place with a situation of paramount importance.

Several decades were to pass, however, before this
vigorous, upstart people were to have so securely established
themselves as to ensure their survival in the hostile physical and
cultural environment in which they had settled. All the while, they
remained the political tributaries of the king of Atzcapotzalco, but
by the 1360's they felt that they were ready to found a kingdom in
their own right. However, because they were sorely aware that they
lacked the proper "pedigree" of nobility, they requested that a prince
from Culhuacán become their king. Of course, such a choice linked them
dynastically to a southern rival of Atzcapotzalco and in that sense it
was a brilliant tactical move as well. Thus, in 1364 Acamapichtli
ascended the throne in Tenochtitlán, becoming in the process the first
of the monarchs of the Aztecs.

Acamapichtli's 40-year reign was largely a peaceful one,
for it definitely was in the interests of the Aztecs to maintain as
friendly relations as possible with the more powerful city-states that
surrounded them. His successor, Huitzilíhuitl, also made an
advantageous move by marrying one of the daughters of the king of
Atzcapotzalco and then inducing her to implore her father to reduce
the onerous tributes he had been exacting from the Aztecs, which he
agreed to do.

On the death of Huitzilíhuitl in 1417, Chimalpopoca, a
nephew of the king of Atzcapotzalco, became the third regent of the
Aztecs. In the following year, he led his armies in the defeat of
Coatlinchán, seizing the southeastern mainland of the lake for the
growing Aztec city-state. However, within the decade an environmental
crisis brought the Aztecs and their recently acquired
relatives-by-marriage likewise to the point of blows. The expanding
island city-state of Tenochtitlán was rapidly outgrowing its supply of
fresh water, both for domestic consumption and for irrigating the
chinampas on which its food was grown. Whether the request for help
which they addressed to the rulers of Atzcapotzalco was rudely phrased
or not, the latter used this as an excuse to move against what they
now perceived was an alarmingly expanding rival. Secret emissaries
were sent into the Aztec capital, and in 1426 both the king
Chimalpopoca and his son were assassinated. This treacherous act was
followed by an economic blockade of the island towns which, together
with the increasingly desperate water supply problem, obliged the
Aztecs to react with violence.

What ensued depends on whose account one wishes to
believe, that of the Aztecs or that of their confederates, the nearby
city-states of Tacuba and Texcoco. According to the Aztec version,
they alone resisted the attacks of Atzcapotzalco and finally rose up
to conquer their oppressive neighbor in 1428. Tacuba and Texcoco, on
the other hand, argued that it was their alliance with the Aztecs
which ultimately turned the tables on Atzcapotzalco. In any event,
what is certain is that, following the election of Itzcóatl, the son
of Acamapichtti, as king and the establishment of a supreme council of
advisors, the Aztec state was launched upon an entirely new course of
action from that time forward. Although the council included the first
Montezuma (Motecuhzoma Ilhuicamina), a son of Huitzilíhuitl;
Nezahualcóyotl, the poet-king of Texcoco; and Tlacaélel, another son
of Huitzilíhuitt, it was the latter more than any other single
individual who came to shape the destiny of the Aztec people.

THE TORCH IS PASSED

For the better part of the next fifty years, three
different kings occupied the Aztec throne, but throughout this entire
time the real power resided with the royal counselor, Tlacaélel. At
his direction, Itzcóatl began a series of reforms granting titles to
the nobles and redistributing landholdings to enhance their status.
Perhaps Tlacaélel's chief contribution was to forge a "historic
conscience" among the Aztecs by burning the books of conquered peoples
and the old accounts of his own people. He rewrote history to exalt
the origins of the Aztecs and to establish a genealogical link with
the Toltecs. He elevated Coatlicue, the hideous mother of
Huitzilopochtli, the god of war, to a special position of honor in the
Aztec pantheon, and gave a new interpretation to the Aztecs' religious
philosophy. The present world of "the fifth sun" had begun, he argued,
with the sacrifice of the gods, especially of Quetzalcóatl, at
Teotihuacán. Thus, if the gods had sacrificed themselves so the sun
would move and man could live, then man should sacrifice himself so
that the sun could live. This, he maintained, was the only way to
postpone the final cataclysm. For Tlacaélel, war was not alone a tool
of conquest, subjugation, and exploitive tribute acquistion, but also
a means of ensuring a continuous supply of human victims for the
sacrificial altars of the Aztec temples. He not only planned and
carried out the first military campaigns of the Aztecs, securing
control over the Valley of Mexico, but he also launched the so-called
"flower wars" whose divine mission it was, in alliance with
Huitzilopochtli, to subjugate all other peoples and nations in order
to preserve the world. As the champions of such a noble cause, he
assured the Aztecs that they would be invincible in battle.

When Itzcóatl died in 1440, he was succeeded on the throne
by Motecuhzoma Ilhuicamina. Although the kingship was first offered to
Motecuhzoma's half-brother Tlacaélel, the latter refused, no doubt
because the reigns of government were already firmly in his hands.
Under his guidance, the "first Montezuma" proceeded to build a great
new temple in honor of their father. However, the precariousness of
Tenochtitlán food and water supply manifested itself again in 1454
when a famine struck the Valley of Mexico and took a heavy toll of
life during the following two years. Perhaps in part to ensure that
such privation would not endanger the growing city-state again, the
construction of an aqueduct from Chapultepec was begun and a military
campaign was launched into the Gulf coastal region which concluded
with the annexation of the area around Veracruz in 1463. This lush
tropical coastland provided the Aztecs with a treasure house of
resources, including corn, beans, fruit, cotton, wood, and medicinal
plants as well as gold dust, jewelry, precious stones, rock crystal,
feathers, live birds, jaguars, seashells, and turtles. After 13 years
of labor, the Chapultepec aqueduct was finally completed in 1466.

It was also during the reign of the "first Montezuma" that
the Aztecs carried out an expedition which probably ranks as the
closest thing to a scientific endeavor that they ever mounted. At
Tlacaélel's urging, a party was sent out to look for Aztlán, the
original Aztec homeland, and to learn if Coatlicue, the mother of the
war god, was still living there. Given such a sponsor and such a
questionable goal, it is small wonder that, when the expedition
returned after an appropriate length of time, it could happily report
that Coatlicue was indeed alive and well and that she sent her
greetings!

Motecuhzoma's passing in the year 1468 once more provided
Tlacaélel with an opportunity to reign as king, but again he declined,
and Axayácatl, the grandson of Itzcóatl, next assumed the mantle of
royal leadership. In 1473, the market center of Tlatelolco was finally
and formally annexed by Tenochtitlán, having remained a separate
political entity ever since its founding at the same time as the Aztec
capital. It was in the same year that the great calendar stone which
has since become the virtual hallmark of the Aztec civilization was
also dedicated.

However, five years further along, when the Aztec armies
turned their attention westward toward Michoacán, they suffered a
disastrous defeat at the hands of the Tarascans, or Purépecha. Some
reports state that as many as 30,000 Aztec warriors died in this one
battle on the approaches to the Tarascan capital. Undoubtedly, the
Tarascans' mastery of advanced metallurgy and possession of superior
weapons were of decisive importance in the campaign's outcome, but
some scholars have likewise attributed the Tarascan victory to their
superb military organization. Wherever the truth may lie, we do know
that the defeat was extremely demoralizing to the Aztecs. It was as
though the war-god had abandoned them, their sacred mission to save
the world had been aborted, and the myth of Aztec invincibility had
been shattered. It was clear that, as a resuit of this single bloody
disaster, the violent and short-lived Aztec Empire had already passed
its psychological peak, and within a matter of months Tlacaélel is
reported to have died. Axayácatl himself is said never to have
recovered from this stunning blow, and after a lingering malaise of
three years, he too passed away.

Figure 57.

This reproduction of the Aztec calendar stone found in the National
Museum of Anthropology and History in Mexico City shows how
brilliantly the original was painted. In the third ring from the
outside are depicted the 20 symbols of the days of the sacred almanac.
They are meant to be read in a counterclockwise direction, beginning
at the top left.

In 1481 Tizoc, the brother of Axayácatl, was elected king,
but his reign was both brief and depressing. No doubt in a
vainglorious attempt to rekindle Aztec pride and fervor, he began the
construction of the largest temple to the war-god ever undertaken, but
he died in 1486 before he saw it completed. At this juncture, a third
brother, Ahuízotl, was elected king, and the following year the new
temple was dedicated in the presence of invited dignitaries from
tributary states both far and near. (Even the king of the hated
Tarascans was reputedly in attendance.) The Aztecs "pulled out all the
stops" to make this event the most memorable that had ever been
witnessed up until that time, for over the course of the four days
that the celebration went on, it is variously reported that between
20,000 and 80,000 human victims had their hearts torn out on the
sacrificial stone at the temple's top. The continuing "flower wars"
with nearby Tlaxcala helped to supply many of the victims, but new
military campaigns against the Huastecs to the northeast and the
Zapotecs to the south also made their contributions.

If Tenochtitlán's thirst for blood was in any measure
satisfied by this horrendous ceremony, that satisfaction was only
temporary at best. Just as pressing, if not more so, however, was the
growing city's thirst for water, and in 1499 a new aqueduct was opened
into the city from the southwesterly precinct of Coyoacán. Although
the entire project was carried out against the advice of some of the
earlier residents of the district, the Aztecs soon found that the
volume of water they had directed into the city was far too great to
be satisfactorily contained. As a result, lake levels were seriously
upset and the Aztec capital was flooded, apparently with a
considerable loss of life. Indeed, Ahuízotl himself was injured during
the inundation, and after a lingering illness passed away in 1502.

Against this sobering backdrop, his son, Motecuhzoma
Xocoyotzin (the "second Montezuma"), assumed the throne, intent on
restoring whatever grandeur he could to the Aztecs. His first move was
to deify himself, but in order to do this, he had to arrange for the
assassination of most of the court officials who had earlier served
his father, for they obviously knew too much to go along with his
grandiose ambitions. When his supposed ally, Nezahualpilli, the king
of Texcoco (actually a secret enemy), came forward with ominous
predictions as to the imminent demise of the Aztec Empire, Montezuma
was visibly shaken, and the subsequent occurrence of other mysterious
omens only served to heighten his anxiety. Visions of men on horses, a
smoking comet in the sky, and the destruction of the temple of
Huitzilopochtli by fire unnerved him further. Worst of all was
Nezahualpilli's prophecy that Quetzalcóatl would soon return to
rightfully claim his kingdom, for such a warning the exiled king of
Tula had himself delivered, as all the heirs of the Toltecs well knew.

When Montezuma led his people in the celebration of the
"binding of the years" in 1507, he may well have doubted whether the
world as he knew it would endure another 52 years. Perhaps already
then the first reports were beginning to reach him of "great white
houses" out upon the sea amidst the islands of the rising sun.
Certainly, within a few years, these Spanish exploring vessels were
being sighted off the coast of Mexico itself, and with an almost
inexorable rhythm, the approach of impending doom cast its lengthening
shadow over the melancholy emperor and his terror-ridden state. In
what has to be one of the most remarkable coincidences of all human
history, Hernán Cortés and his small band of conquistadores landed on
the beach at Veracruz in the fateful Aztec year of "1 Reed" -- a year
of the same name as that of Quetzalcóatl's birth and therefore one in
which all Mesoamericans would have expected him to return. Paralyzed
with a fear instilled by the prognostications of his own sacred
calendar, the hapless Montezuma was at a loss as to how he should
receive the strange white "gods" who had arrived on his shores.

It is beyond the scope of this work to discuss the Spanish
conquest, but if there is any further irony to be appended to this
account of the rise and fall of Mesoamerican civilization, it can only
be this: The flame of Mesoamerican intellect which had first been
kindled with the passage of the zenithal sun over Izapa at noon on
August 13, 1359 B.C., was extinguished on the causeways of the Lake of
the Moon as the sun was setting on August 13, 1521. With all the
poignancy of a Greek tragedy, the cycle had now come full circle.
Tenochtitlán lay in ruins, and Cuauhtémoc, the last emperor of the
Aztecs, was in chains. The Mesoamerican age was over.

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