Aztlan- Aztec LocationLocation · Landmark"Place of Whiteness"

The Place of Whiteness

Aztlan, "Place of Whiteness" or "Place of Herons," was an island in a lake, surrounded by still water and filled with white herons whose feathers gleamed against the dark surface. Fish crowded the shallows, waterbirds nested in the reeds, and the ancestors of the Mexica lived in prosperity on this island they would never see again. From aztatl, the Nahuatl word for heron, came the name Aztlan, and from Aztlan came the name by which the world would know these people: Aztec, "people of Aztlan."

At the center of the island rose a mountain called Colhuacan, "Curved Mountain," and within its hollow interior lay Chicomoztoc, the Place of Seven Caves. The Codex Boturini captures the moment of departure. A figure paddles a canoe away from the island. Behind him, a temple sits atop a hill. Ahead, footprints trail from the shore into unknown territory.

The Seven Caves

From Chicomoztoc's seven openings, seven tribes stepped into the light: the Mexica last among them. The other Nahuatl-speaking peoples had already departed to seek their fortunes across the Valley of Mexico, leaving the Mexica to serve a tyrannical elite on the island. They were the weakest tribe, with no land and no power. They might have remained there forever, servants on a heron-white island, had their god not spoken.

The Divine Command

Huitzilopochtli appeared to the Mexica priests and commanded them to leave Aztlan. They must abandon the island and wander until they found a sign he would reveal: an eagle perched on a nopal cactus growing from a stone, devouring a serpent. Where they found this vision, they would build their city. In return, Huitzilopochtli promised them empire: gold and jade and quetzal feathers from every people they would conquer. They wrapped his image in a sacred bundle, lifted it onto the shoulders of his teomamaque, the god-bearers, and walked away from the only home they had ever known.

The Long Wandering

The journey from Aztlan to the Valley of Mexico lasted generations. Huitzilopochtli guided the Mexica through his priests, who carried the sacred bundle and received his instructions in dreams. The tribes that had left Chicomoztoc before them traveled alongside for a time before separating, each seeking its own territory. The Mexica moved from place to place, sometimes welcomed as allies, more often despised as vagrants with no land and no reputation except the fierce god they carried.

At Coatepec, Serpent Mountain, Huitzilopochtli was born in battle, slaying Coyolxauhqui and scattering the stars. At Chapultepec the Mexica were attacked and their leader Huitzilihuitl captured and sacrificed. Among the Culhua they served as warriors and were given land no one else wanted: a swampy island infested with serpents, which they ate and thrived on. In 1325, on that marshy island in Lake Texcoco, they found the eagle on the cactus and founded Tenochtitlan.

The Search for the Lost Homeland

After the Mexica had become masters of central Mexico, Moctezuma I wondered about the homeland his ancestors had left behind. Around 1440, he sent sixty sorcerer-priests to find Aztlan. In Durán's account, the sorcerers traveled by magical means, transforming into birds, and reached the island their ancestors had abandoned centuries before. They found an ancient woman, impossibly old, who identified herself as the mother of Huitzilopochtli. She wept when she recognized the descendants of her son's followers.

She told them something bitter: those who had remained in Aztlan were still young and immortal, untouched by age or death. The Mexica sorcerers, laden with the gifts of empire, could barely climb the hill that the ageless islanders ascended without effort. Wealth had made them soft. Mortality had made them heavy. The ones who left, who had followed Huitzilopochtli into the wider world, were the ones who grew old and died. The sorcerers returned to Tenochtitlan, and Moctezuma understood that his people had traded eternal life for earthly power. There was no going back.