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Los Aztecas
Los Aztecas
The Aztec were a band of hunter-gatherers living on a
small island in northwestern Mexico, when their god,
Huitzilopochtli (wee tsee loh POCH tlee),
told them to leave their homeland.
He said, "Go where the cactus grows,
on which the eagle sits happily…
there we shall wait, there we shall meet a
number of tribes and with our arrow or with our shield
we shall conquer them."
They journeyed through deserts and
over steep mountains.
They were hungry and thirsty,
hoping at every turn to see the promised
sign: an eagle sitting on a prickly pear
cactus, eating a snake.
After 200 years of wandering, the Aztec came upon the
promised sign. They found the eagle and a small, swampy
island in Lake Texcoco in the Valley of Mexico. They named
their new home Tenochtitlan,(tay nawch tee TLAN) " Place
of the Prickly Pear Cactus." There they started to build a
powerful empire.
The future did not look good for the Aztec.
Because the land on their island was mostly
swamp, they couldn't grow crops such as corn for
food or cotton for clothing. They learned to collect
and eat algae from the lake.
These are the floating gardens
around their central cities.
From other more powerful tribes, the Aztec
learned to be skilled warriors.
They began to build a huge empire that would one-day
cover the southern third of Mexico and extend into what
is today Guatemala.The Aztec Empire covered an area
about 375 miles wide and 315 miles long.
One of the greatest rulers of the empire
was Ahuitzotl (ah WEE soh tl).
Ahuitzotl also oversaw the completion of the pyramid of the Great
Temple, which he dedicated to the god Huitzilopochtli.
When Ahuitzotl died in 1502, his nephew,
Moctezuma , became the new ruler.
Under his rule, which lasted until 1520,the empire reached its greatest size,
with a population of about 25 million people.
Merchants sold many of their goods in
city markets
throughout the empire.
The marketplace was an important
center in Aztec cities.
We also know Aztec craftworkers produced beautiful
feather headdresses,
stone sculptures
…and jewelry set with precious stones.
Perhaps the most important Aztec artifacts that archaeologists have discovered
are the Aztec codices
( a kind of book, with pages made from tree bark).
The pages open and close like folding screens and include
brightly colored hieroglyphs( pictures that stand for words).
At one time there were hundreds of these books.
Fighting for the gods
The everyday lives of all classes of Aztec society
revolved around religion.
These are just a few of the more than 1,000 Aztec gods.
Corn
Water
Fire
Food
Mother
Wind
Moon
Sun
Flowers
The two most important gods in the Aztec world were
Tlaloc (tla LOHK), the god of rain,
and Huitzilopochtli, the god of the sun and of war who they feared because
they thought he could destroy the world whenever he wanted.
The Aztec held many religious ceremonies throughout the year.
At these occasions, Aztec priests offered sacrifices to the gods
to help ensure good harvests.
Human sacrifice was common. When the Temple
of the Sun in Tenochtitlan was dedicated to the sun and rain gods,
the Aztec sacrificed as many as 10,000 people !
The reasons for the human sacrifices are still not clear.
Many historians believe that the Aztec used these
human sacrifices to frighten their enemies. Most of the people
sacrificed by the Aztec were captives of war.
The Aztec believed that sacrificing an enemy warrior especially
pleased their gods. Some think that the Aztec
arranged wars just to capture sacrifices for the gods.
As the number of people in the empire grew, the Aztec
required more land to grow crops and more tribute to support
the expanding government. To meet this demand for resources,
they conquered more and more tribes.
Cortez sailed from Cuba in February 1519. Soon, Cortez landed
in present-day Mexico, and he brought with him about 400
soldiers,100 sailors, and--most importantly—
between 10 and 20 horses.
A very religious man, Moctezuma beileved that Cortez
was actually the Aztec god Quetzacoatl.
Thus, when Cortez arrived at Tenochtitlan
on November 8, 1519, Moctezuma greeted
him warmly and even kissed his hand
Since Cortez' behavior was somewhat less regal than that which would be
expected of a god, Moctezuma began to be suspicious of him.
Hoping that a sizeable gift would make the Spaniards go away,
he presented Cortez with gold and jewels. Unfortunately for Moctezuma,
his gift had the reverse effect, it incited the Spaniards' greed. Cortez seized
Moctezuma as a hostage: to gain wealth from a large ransom, and to
forestall an Aztec attack.
It took Cortez almost a year, but he built up his forces and
conquered every part of the Aztec empire--except Tenochtitlan.
Finally, in May 1521,Cortez was ready for the final assault on the
Aztec capital. The Spanish attacked the besieged city almost daily,
and the end came on August 13. When it was all over, over 40,000
Aztecs lay dead, killed by weapons and disease, and the
once-mighty Aztec Empire lay in ruins.
Cortez began to build Mexico City
over the ruins of Tenochtitlan
Tenochititlan before Cortez
El Templo Mayor today