Aztec Origins
From Mexico of the Mexicans by Lewis Spence, 1917.
From: Unknown To: 1521 C.E.
Location: Mexico City, Mexico
Note: This article has been excerpted from a larger work in the public domain and shared here due to its historical value. It may contain outdated ideas and language that do not reflect TOTA’s opinions and beliefs.
Founding of Tenochtitlan, from Folio 2 of the Codex Mendoza, 1529-1553.
From Mexico of the Mexicans by Lewis Spence.
With the exception of Peru, Mexico is perhaps the only Latin-American Republic in which the native Indian race has not shrunk and retreated before the onset of European civilisation. This is owing to the circumstance that when first brought into contact with European influences the Mexican Indian was in full enjoyment of a civilisation of his own, which, if it was inferior to that of his conquerors as regards important essentials, was in some of its phases even superior, and as far removed from the nomadic habits and scanty culture of the savage tribes of North and South America as it is possible for the usages of the settled agriculturist to differ from those of the wandering hunter. If we would comprehend modern Mexico, we must perforce have some little acquaintance with the strange and bizarre civilisation which preceded it.
The earliest accounts of the natives of the Mexican plateau are those furnished by Hernan Cortes, and the soldiers and priests who either assisted in the conquest of Mexico or else arrived from Spain shortly after that event. Landing at Vera Cruz in 1519, Cortes first came into contact with the coastal tribes, gaining at length the plateau of Anahuac (“Place by the Water"), where he encountered more highly civilised native peoples. Subduing some and enrolling others under his banner, he advanced to the city of Mexico—Tenochtitlan, the capital of the Azteca—by far the most powerful people in the land, who lived in houses of stone or marble, clothing themselves in fine cotton dyed in many colours or in wonderful feather cloaks made from the plumage of brilliant-hued birds. This people possessed a religion as picturesque as it was terrible in rite and sacrifice, and legal and political systems which in most of their provisions were, perhaps, equal in enlightenment to those of seventeenth-century Europe.
The Aztecs or Nahua had records of their national history painted in symbols upon deer-skins which told of successive migrations of their stock from the north to Mexican plateau. Thus the Toltecs, Chichimecs, Tecpanecs, Acolhuans, and Tlascaitecs had successively poured their myriads upon the table-land of Anahuac, the latest immigration being that of the Aztecs themselves. Many of these tribes were of one and the same race—the Nahua—and used in common the Nahuatlatolli, or “speech of those who live by rule,” the word "Nahua" meaning "the settled folk," the "law-abiding."
The Toltecs, the first of these successive swarms, were credited by native traditions with a higher culture than was possessed by those tribes who succeeded them The Toltecs. in Anahuac. According to native lore, they were mighty builders, and so skilled in artistry and handicrafts that the name Toltecatl became a synonym for "artist " or "craftsman" among the less gifted peoples who inherited their culture. Their downfall was due to plague, famine, and drought no less than to the inroads of the savage if related Chichimec, who entered upon the heir-ship of their civilisation.
Excavations at Tula, the modern name of the ancient Tollan, the Toltec capital, substantiate what legend has to say of the Toltec culture, the architectural and artistic remains unearthed there exhibiting a standard of excellence considerably higher than any arrived at by their successors.
There were other and relatively more aboriginal peoples in Mexico besides those of Nahua race—the Otomi, who still occupy Guanajuato and Queretaro; the Aboriginal Huasteca, a people speaking the same language as the Maya of Central America; the Totonacs and Chontals, dwelling on the Mexican Gulf; and, to the south, the Mixteca and Zapoteca, highly civilised folk, who nowadays furnish modern Mexico with most of her schoolmasters and lesser officials. To the west lay the Tarascans, famous craftsmen and jewellers.
Four Aztec warriors drawn in folio 67 of Codex Mendoza, 1529-1553.
A general impression seems to prevail that the Aztecs as a race are extinct. In what circumstances the belief arose it would be difficult to say; but it would seem to have emanated from the pages of writers of romance, who love to dwell upon the legends connected with the mysterious mined cities of Yucatan, and who too often confound the Aztecs with the Maya of that country, who are also far from being exterminated. The Nahua race, of which the Aztecs were a division, is very much alive, and forms the basis of the greater part of the Indian populations of present-day Mexico.
After the conquest of Mexico by Cortes, intermarriage between the Spanish hidalgos and Mexican women of rank was common, as bestowing on the Castilian a claim to his wife's estates. But, in subsequent generations, few alliances between Spaniards of the aristocracy and native women were entered into. The lower ranks of the Spanish soldiery, however, espoused many Mexican wives, and it is chiefly from these unions that the half-breeds of the present day have sprung. The Nahuatlatolli, or native Mexican tongue—the speech of the Aztecs—is still widely spoken in Mexico, and this alone should be sufficient to refute the statement that the race has become extinct.
Spence, Lewis. Mexico of the Mexicans. Charles Scribner's Sons, 1917.
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