Chicomoztoc- Aztec LocationLocation · Landmark"Place of Seven Caves"

The Seven Caves

Chicomoztoc, "Place of Seven Caves," was a great mountain near or within Aztlan, the legendary Nahua homeland. Inside it, seven womb-like caves opened in the rock, and from each cave a different tribe emerged to begin its migration toward the Valley of Mexico. The Xochimilca left first. The Mexica left last.

The Codex Boturini depicts the migration's beginning: the seven tribes emerge from the curved mountain and set out along divergent paths. Each followed its own route and arrived at its own time, which is why the Nahuatl-speaking peoples of central Mexico shared a language but ruled as separate city-states. The Mexica's late arrival left them landless and poor in a valley already claimed by the others.

The Mountain and the Sources

Chicomoztoc's relationship to Aztlan shifts between sources. Some codices show them as the same place, the curved mountain rising from the island of Aztlan. Others present Chicomoztoc as a separate site encountered during the migration. The Historia Tolteca-Chichimeca treats it as the origin point for Chichimec peoples more broadly, not only the Nahua seven, which suggests the seven-cave image was shared across many traditions in central Mexico.

What every account preserves is the image itself: a mountain with seven openings, each giving birth to a people. Tenochtitlan and Tlaxcala, Texcoco and Chalco could fight for generations, but they had come from the same mountain.