Aztlan Affirmed, Part IV: Other Cities, Other Tongues

This is the fourth entry in my series examining indigenous sources to see what the Nahuas / Aztecs had to say about the legendary land of Aztlān.

The Codex Chimalpopoca was a three-part Nahuatl document (with some passages in Spanish) copied sometime in the early 17th century by Fernando de Alva Cortés Ixtlilxóchitl, a historian descended from the kings of Tetzcohco (more about him later).

I say “was” because it was lost in 1949.

It’s listed under “Colección Antiguo no. 159,” supposedly sitting in the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia located in Mexico City.

But it’s not there. Someone misplaced or stole it. Thankfully, there’s still a handwritten copy at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France and a photographic copy made in the 1940s.

There’s not much information about Aztlān. In the section known as Anales de Cuauhtitlan (Cuauhtitlan was the 4th most important city in the Triple Alliance), the codex says the Mexihtin left Aztlān in the year 1 Rabbit (1090 CE).

11:23–24: “Ce tōchtli - Aztlān ic huālolīnqueh Mexihtin.”

It also equates Aztlān with Colhuahcān.

83:38: “Auh inic huāllahqueh in Colhuahcān in Aztlān inic huāllahqueh in Mexihtin ōmpōhualxihuitl on caxtōlli īpan ye xihuitl.”

The Codex Chimalpopoca also mentions Chicomoztoc.

1:24: “Ce ācatl - īpan quīzqueh Chicomoztoc in Chīchīmēcah ōmihtoh ōmotēnēuh.” (In 1 Rabbit [635 CE], it is said, it is mentioned that the Chichimeca came out of Chicomoztoc [455 years before the Mexica].)

In 79:31–33, the codex also tells us that the demigods known as Mīmixcōāh (cloud serpents) lived in Chicomoztoc before humans (at least, those Cloud Serpents who survived a rebellion against their father, the Sun).

Chief among these deities was Mixcōātl (THE Cloud Serpent), principal god of the Otomis and Chichimeca. The codex depicts him as guiding the Toltecs like Huitzilopochtli does the Mexica.

This emergence and guidance story would become very common in Anahuac. It’s clear that the Toltecs believed that their ancestors had been the ones to emerge first from Chicomoztoc (inside Colhuahcān or Colhuahcatepētl, as some documents call the curved mountain), guiding other Nahua tribes.