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The Aztecs were conquered by Spain in 1521 after a long siege of the capital, Tenochtitlan, where much of the population died from hunger and smallpox. Cortés, with 508 Spaniards, did not fight alone but with as many as 150,000 or 200,000 allies from Tlaxcala , and eventually other Aztec tributary states.
The Aztecs [a] (/ ˈ æ z t ɛ k s / AZ-teks) were a Mesoamerican civilization that flourished in central Mexico in the post-classic period from 1300 to 1521. The Aztec people included different ethnic groups of central Mexico, particularly those groups who spoke the Nahuatl language and who dominated large parts of Mesoamerica from the 14th to the 16th centuries.
Family and lineage were the basic units of Aztec society. One's lineage determined social standing, and noble traced their lineage back to the mythical past, as they were said to be descended from the god Quetzalcoatl. [9] Prestigious lineages also traced their kin back through ruling dynasties, preferably ones with a Toltec heritage.
Mexica children were forcibly taken to newly established Christian schools where they were indoctrinated into Christian beliefs and Spanish culture, and the surviving Mexica men and women were sent to work in newly-established Spanish estates, known as haciendas, as well as mines and other civil projects, such as digging canals.
The Spaniards and their allies attempted to retreat without detection in what is known as the "Sad Night" or La Noche Triste, realizing that they were vulnerable to the hostile Mexica in Tenochtitlan following Moctezuma's death. Spaniards and their Indigenous allies were discovered clandestinely retreating and were then forced to fight their ...
These pochteca were also seldom identified by the products they sold by combining the product they were providing and the Nahuatl suffix of their job. For instance, a tlanamacac that sells chile peppers would be called chilnamacac ; a combination of the word chili and the Nahuatl word ending for vender ( -namacac ).
[43]: 66–68 [48]: 270–72 Finally, Moctezuma let the Catholic conquistadors build an altar on their temple, next to the Aztec idols. [48]: 277 Finally, the Aztec gods allegedly told the Mexican papas, or priests, they would not stay unless the Spaniards were killed and driven back across the sea.
The later Aztec culture saw the Toltecs as their intellectual and cultural predecessors and described Toltec culture emanating from Tollan (Nahuatl for Tula) as the epitome of civilization; indeed, in the Nahuatl language, the word "Toltec" came to take on the meaning "artisan." The Aztec oral and pictographic tradition also described the ...