Aztecs

22 Pages 5471 Words

. There is a lo!
ng history of civilizations in the Central Valley of Mexico; as early as several centuries before Christ agricultural tribes had already settled, and by the birth of Christ had established as their great religious center Teotihuacán. The history of the Central Valley after circa the tenth century A.D. is one of tribal conflict and superiority. About the time of the fall of this agricultural civilization, which flourished from approximately the second to the tenth centuries A.D., a new tribe, who we know as the Toltecs, settled at Tula, Hidalgo. They belonged to a larger group known as the Nahua, or Nahuatl- speaking, and seem to have entered the Central Valley from the north or northwest. The Toltec civilization gradually replaced the older, agricultural civilization, as Toltec influence was felt as far as the Yucatán Peninsula and other areas occupied by the Mayan peoples. Yet by the eleventh century A.D., another tribe, the Chichimecs, had already begun to eclipse the Toltec!
s as the dominant group of the Central Valley. By approximately the thirteenth century, the Chichimecs had replaced the Toltecs (Wolf 1998). About this time, another Nahua tribe known as the Aztecs began their migration, in c. 1168. They left their mythical mysterious homeland called Aztlán, place of the herons, or Chicomoztoc, place of the seven caves, and migrated southwards through Michoacán (León-Portilla 1992). The Aztecs, or "Crane People," arrived in the Central Valley and obtained permission to settle at Chapultepec in c. 1248 (Caso 1958). The tradition of tribal conflict in the Central Valley was continued; however, it seems that the Aztecs, at first, were practically enslaved by the other Nahua tribes inhabiting the Central Valley. The Aztec culture would not be subjugated, however, and continued in its struggle for power. By the fourteenth century the Aztecs had founded two settlements on islands in lakes: Tlaltetalco and Tenoch...