Legacy, lineage and laughter
Indigenous sources reveal that Aztec life wasn’t as unfamiliar as we might expect
Pre-conquest Aztec history
GETTY^ IMAGES/AKG-IMAGES/ALAMY/TOPFOTOThe Aztecs had a
history of their own
The indigenous historical annals reveal
that prior to conquest, the Aztecs had a
well-documented and detailed history,
complete with wars, rising and falling
kings, political marriages, palace plots
and executions. Men always ruled, but
women were important, for in a world
where each prince had many wives, the
question of the succession was extreme-
ly complex. Which of the wives’ family
backgrounds was powerful enough to
ensure that one of her sons would
inherit? The political intrigues never
seemed to end. Henry VIII probably
would have found it all very familiar!
Without these sources, we tend to
imagine that the Aztecs’ history is lost
in the mists of time, or that they lived
in an unchanging world. W ith these
sources, for at least two generations
before the conquest, we have historical
facts at our fingertips.
They valued
mutual respect
The Aztecs are famous for having
conquered so many other city-states or
altepetl (pronounced al-TE-pet) that we
refer to their ‘empire’. At the peak of their
power, they did not take ‘no’ for an answer,
so we have not tended to think of them as
being especially talented at exhibiting
mutual respect. But indigenous sources
reveal that, as with all Nahuatl-speaking
cultures, each altepetl was very careful
to ensure that all parts of the community
felt included and none overly burdened.
For example, in recitations of their
people’s history, each neighbourhood
would designate a performer who would
step forward to offer their perspective on
events as one of a sequence of rendi-
tions. And each neighbourhood would
take it in turn to assume responsibility
for chores such as repairing the local
temple or removing weeds from a port.
In some Nahua city-states, even the
chieftainship passed circularly among
different family lines.They loved to make
each other laugh
Archaeological evidence has suggested
that the Aztecs were a sombre people,
and this was true in some regards and at
some moments. But Nahuatl-language
sources have taught us that they al so
loved a good joke. In their myth-history
recounting the deep past, one of the
worst kings, a man who caused terrible
rifts and wars among the people, was
nicknamed Huemac (WAY-mak), which
means ‘big gif t’. Some gif t he was! Funny
names weren’t just for kings, either.
One little girl hated baths so much that
she was nicknamed ‘She’s-not-a-Fish’.
Another story tells of a local chief
who was nearly driven crazy when his
enemies arrived, because they persisted
in cooking savoury ducks, whose
delicious smell rose up to him on his hill
and reminded him how hungry he was.
When the people gathered for perfor-
mances of their histor y, scenes like this
would have been especially welcome.European diseases brought devastation
to the New World because none of the
people there had acquired any immunity
to them. Smallpox had an especially
high rate of mortality, and the Mesoamer-
icans were among the first to suffer.
Nahuatl-language sources demonstrate
that before the conquest, when a person
lay dying, the single most important
element was to know that he or she wouldbe remembered by loved ones and their
descendants. Thus, when the epidemics
began and children were taken in large
numbers, destroying hope for posterity,
the pain was almost unfathomable.
In a record that one man kept in the
midst of a later whooping cough epidemic,
listing each person who died in his
community, he wrote one Sunday,
“No one’s child died today.”An Aztec depiction of victims of smallpox –
a disease that devastated its communitiesAztec women wearing traditional clothing,
as depicted in a contemporary illustrationA 19th-century illustration of Aztecs in battle.
The culture also had a compassionate sideThey had their own fear of epidemics