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The long-distance trade was carried out by merchants called pochteca, who were defined by their positions within the system. These professional merchants occupied a high status in Aztec society, below the noble class. The pochteca were responsible for providing the materials that the noble class used to display their wealth. These materials ...
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.
They were responsible for providing the materials that the Aztec nobility used to display their wealth, which were often obtained from foreign sources. The pochteca also acted as agents for the nobility, selling the surplus tribute that had been bestowed on the noble and warrior elite and also sourcing rare goods or luxury items.
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 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 ...
Two key works by historian Charles Gibson, Tlaxcala in the Sixteenth Century (1952) [95] and his monograph The Aztecs Under Spanish Rule: A History of the Indians of the Valley of Mexico, 1519–1810 (1964) [96] were central in reshaping the historiography of the indigenous and their communities from the Spanish conquest to the 1810 Mexican ...
Most Zacatecos were nomadic, although a few groups were essentially sedentary. Both men and women wore their hair down to their waist. Some Chichimeca tribes wore their head braided, but it is unspecified if any Zacatec tribes did so. They used body paint and tattoos to distinguish themselves from other tribes.
The Totonacs were one of the peoples that were politically subjugated by the Aztecs and word was immediately sent to the Aztec Emperor (in Nahuatl, Tlatoani) of Tenochtitlan Motecuhzoma II. Going inland the Spaniards encountered and fought with Totonac forces and Nahua forces from the independent Altepetl of Tlaxcallan .