Aztlan Affirmed, Part II: Nahua Historians

This article is the second in a series revealing what indigenous sources had to say about Aztlan, the legendary homeland of the Aztecs.

Indigenous translator and historian Fernando Alvarado Tezozómoc was descended from two Mexica Emperors: Motēuczōma II was his maternal grandfather; Āxāyacatl, his great-grandfather on the side of his father Diego de Alvarado Huanitzin (selected as first governor of “San Juan Tenochtitlán” in New Spain).

Tezozómoc is best known for his work Crónica Mexicayotl (Chronicle of the Mexica Way), written in Nahuatl around 1570. In composing it, he drew from Crónica X, a [hypothetical] lost document used by other Colonial historians as a source (based on the existence of similarly worded passages in multiple codices).

Let’s see what the Crónica says about Aztlan.

Right away the historian announces “Here is said, is mentioned how they arrived, entered those elders who are called, named Teōchīchīmēcah [“divine Chichimeca”], Mexihtin of Aztlan, Chicomoztocah in search of land, coming to be worthy of the land in Mexihco Tenochtitlan.”

(I now begin to paraphrase in the interest of relative brevity. Perhaps in the future I’ll post a complete translation of these passages.)