1491_ New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus - Charles C. Mann [68]
The Mexica were an unlikely choice for heir to the imperial tradition of Teotihuacan and the Toltecs. Poor and unsophisticated, they probably came to Lake Texcoco about 1250 A.D. and became vassals of more important groups. Eventually some enemies drove them away from the fertile shore. The Mexica fled to a swampy, uninhabited island. According to an account by Hernando Álvaro Tezozómoc, grandson of the last Mexica ruler, the refugees stumbled about the island for days, looking for food and a place to settle, until one of the priests had a vision in a dream. In the dream, the Mexica’s patron deity instructed his people to look in the swamp for a cactus. Standing on the cactus, the god promised, “you shall see an eagle…warming itself in the sun.”
And [the next morning], once more, they went in among the rushes, in among the reeds, to the edge of the spring.
And when they came out into the reeds,
There at the edge of the spring was the tenochtli [a cactus fruit],
And they saw an eagle on the tenochtli, perched on it, standing on it.
It was eating something, it was feeding,
It was pecking at what it was eating.
And when the eagle saw the Mexica, he bowed his head low.
Its nest, its pallet, was of every kind of precious feather—
Of lovely cotinga feathers, roseate spoonbill feathers, quetzal feathers.
And they also saw strewn about the heads of sundry birds,
The heads of precious birds strung together,
And some birds’ feet and bones.
And the god called out to them, he said to them,
“Oh Mexica, it shall be there!”
(But the Mexica did not see who spoke.)
It was for this reason that they call it Tenochtitlan.
And the Mexica wept, they said,
“Oh happy, oh blessed are we!
We have beheld the city that shall be ours!
Let us go now, let us rest….”
This was in the year…1325.
In this way came into being Tenochtitlan, sole rival, in size and opulence, to Teotihuacan.
Among the Mexica, a council of clan elders chose the overall ruler. Or, rather, chose the overall rulers—the Mexica divided authority between a tlatoani (literally, “speaker”), a diplomatic and military commander who controlled relations with other groups, and a cihuacoatl (literally, “female serpent”), who supervised internal affairs. For a century after Tenochtitlan’s birth, the tlatoani’s position was unenviable. The Mexica were subordinated by a nearby city-state on the shore, and the tlatoani was forced to send Mexica men as conscripts for its wars. Only in 1428 did Itzacoatl, a newly selected tlatoani, ally with two other small vassal states to overthrow their mutual overlords. In victory, the three groups officially formed the Triple Alliance, with the Mexica the most powerful leg of the tripod. Like Tawantinsuyu, the empire grew rapidly. Its presiding genius was not Itzacoatl, though, but his nephew Tlacaelel (1398–1480).
During his long life Tlacaelel was twice offered the position of tlatoani but turned it down both times. Preferring the less glorious and supposedly less influential position of cihuacoatl, head of internal affairs, he ruled from behind the scenes, dominating the Alliance for more than fifty years and utterly reengineering Mexica society. Born to an elite family, Tlacaelel first became known at the age of thirty, when he inspired the Mexica to revolt against their masters, supervised the gestation of the Alliance, and served as Itzacoatl’s general during the assault. After the victory he met with Itzacoatl and the Mexica clan leaders. In addition to taking slaves and booty, wartime victors in central Mexico often burned their enemies’ codices, the hand-painted picture-texts in which priests recorded their people’s histories. Tlacaelel insisted that in addition to destroying the codices of their former oppressors the Mexica should set fire to their own codices. His explanation for this idea can only be described