Return to Aztlan
Return to Aztlán by Dana Levin Rojo
This fascinating book is a nice compliment to The Chaco Meridian, by Stephen Lekson, reviewed elsewhere by me, for reasons that will become apparent below.
Levin Rojo investigates the drivers for the 16th C Spanish exploration of what is now northern Mexico and the SW US. Her thesis, which is very well argued, is that the Iberians were not a bunch of quixotic dreamers chasing ever-receding Medieval European legends (e.g. the Seven Cities of Antillia) and chimeras from Antiquity (e.g. the Amazons) into the unknown north, a theory popular with 19th and 20th C historians, but were acting quite rationally. Firstly, they had the written and oral testimony of the four long-travelling survivors of the disastrous 1527 Panfilo de Narvaez expedition to Florida. When the advance guard of Nuño de Guzman’s Pacific Coast army of conquest found Cabeza de Vaca, Dorantes, Maldonado and Esteban in southern Sonora in 1536(?), the foursome related second-hand stories of multi-storied cities to the north of their route, heard from their Indian hosts, though the only wealth they had seen with their own eyes consisted of a copper bell, some “emerald” arrowheads and beads variously described as silver, coral or pearls (although there is an intriguing reference in Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo to a report of Cabeza de Vaca to the Royal Council where he talks of gold, silver and copper). Cabeza de Vaca mentions that when he asked his hosts where the emerald arrowheads came from, he was told from the north where there are very high mountains and that they trade parrot feathers to obtain them and that there, there are villages and many people and very large houses. Viceroy Mendoza quickly followed this up in 1539 by sending Fray Marcos de Niza north with one of the survivors, Esteban and possibly with Indians who had travelled with C. de Vaca and company as well. Esteban went ahead of Fray Marcos and made it as far as the Zuni pueblo of Hawikuh (near the western border of today’s state of New Mexico), where the inhabitants first imprisoned and then executed him for his insolence and treatment of the local women (according to later accounts). Marcos was close on his heels and claimed to have seen Zuni from a distance before turning back for fear of his own life. His wildly exaggerated description of Hawikuh-Cibola (Cibola was the Spanish transliteration of the Zuni autoappelation of Shi-wi-nah) led to the Coronado expedition of 1540.
The Spanish also listened to and carefully recorded the origin stories of the Nahua/Mexica, which pointed to an ancestral home or homes variously known as Aztlán (the name corresponds to herons, white flowers, reeds, whiteness a marshy environment), Chicomoztoc, Colhuacán or Copala. Although descriptions of the place of origin are diverse, common themes are 1) near or surrounded by water 2) urban, stratified, with agriculture, temples and leadership 3) to the north or west of Mexico 4) having a hill with seven caves. The Spanish reasoned that if the Nahua had built such a rich civilization in the Valley of Mexico, might not they have left behind something similar where they came from? Hernan Cortes himself was said to have found, amongst the effects of Moctezuma, “chronicles, hieroglyphs and paintings” with evidence for the northern origin of the Mexicans. Independently, Pedro de Castañeda Najera, one of chroniclers of the Vazquez de Coronado expedition, says that the motive for Nuño de Guzmán’s 1530’s expedition was to look for a land to the north, where an Indian slave told him his father had traded feathers, and from whence he had returned with gold and silver. Other participants in Guzman’s adventures speak of a search for the seven cities (=seven caves of the hill of Chicomoztoc?). Francisco de Ibarra’s 1562 expedition to lands north of Durango was described as directed toward Copala, where people wore cotton clothing and had much silver and which was the ancient place of origin of the Aztecs. Many of the extant versions of the Aztec origin story point to a distant northern location for Chicomoztoc/Aztlan/Copala. Some specifically say that it is located in the (then, in the 1580s-1590s, recently discovered) province of New Mexico. Finally the Spanish colonists who accompanied Juan de Oñate when he founded the colony of New Mexico in 1598 believed it to be the land of origin of the Aztecs, as testified to by Villagrá in his 1610 epic poem relating his adventures with Oñate.
Furthermore, the central Mexican Indians who accompanied the Spanish on these expeditions were largely Nahua. They far outnumbered the Spanish and, based on the evidence Levin Rojo presents, went along voluntarily, and were (for the most part) willing participants in, and may even have inspired, this search for their ancestral lands. In a folio of the Tlaxcala Codex that records the participation of Tlaxcaltecos en Vazques de Coronado’s expedition, “Cippola’ (Cibola) is shown with seven gates.
Eventually these stories morphed into “New” Mexico, initially not meaning the Spanish province nor the US State of that name but literally a new Mexico, new to the Spanish but actually the old homeland of the Nahua, with all of the riches that implied.
One of the interesting themes Levin Rojo develops is that favorable climatic conditions allowed the expansion of central Mexican peoples to the north from the 7th -12th C AD, taking their characteristic agriculture (maize, squash and beans) with them. This trend reversed and there was a southward migration forced by deteriorating climate beginning in the 12th C AD. This is testified to by tree ring data from the Colorado river drainage which shows a 50 year cold spell/drought starting in about 1130 AD. The Nahua migration stories are tied to their famous calendar, which dates their departure from Chicomoztoc/Aztlan in the year 1 Tecpatl, which corresponds to either 1168 or possibly 1116. In The Chaco Meridian, author Lekson says that Chaco was abandoned circa 1150. There is subsequent material evidence of their cultural influence in many directions, but especially to the south along the eponymous line of longitude, through the Mimbres Valley and on to Paquime, in what is now northern Chihuahua, and from there into the cliff dwellings of the northern Sierra Madre. Tenochtitlan-Mexico was founded in either 1325 or 1345, according to the Mexica calendar. Pretty interesting, no?
It is also worth mentioning that on Alexander von Humboldt’s 1810 (?) Map of New Spain, which he compiled from sources in the archives of Mexico City under the auspices of the Spanish King and Viceroy, there are several interesting notes. Near Utah Lake: “This Lake, the limits of which are very imperfectly known from the Journals of Father Escalante, is perhaps the Teguayo Lake, from the borders of which, according to some historians, the Azteques removed to the River Gila”. South of the junction of the San Juan (Rio de Nabajoa on his map) and the Colorado River (Rio Zaguananas), he notes: “First abode of the Azteques come from Aztlan in (illegible) tradition uncertain”. Near the junction of the San Pedro River with the Gila River in Arizona, he notes: “Ruins of Casas Grandes, second Abode of the Azteques, from whence they passed by Tarahumara to Hueicolluiacan (Culiacan). Then at approximately the location of Casas Grandes, Chihuahua (Paquime) he notes: “Casas Grandes. Third abode of the Azteques”. An earlier version of Humboldt’s notation near Utah Lake, the San Juan River (though he shows this latter location north of the Colorado River) and Casas Grandes, Arizona appear on the earlier (1768) map of Jose Antonio de Alzate y Ramirez. The same general information is contained in Francisco Javier Clavijero’s 1780 book Historia Antigua de Mexico. A lake Teguyo also shows in the approximately the position of the Great Salt Lake or Utah Lake on Tomas Lopez’s Nuevo Mapa Geografico de la America Septentrional (1768) with the notation “De los contornos de esta Laguna dicen haber salido los Indios Mexicanos a fundar su imperio”. He also has a notation near the junction of the Gila and the San Pedro(¿) saying “segundo mansión de los indios mexicanos”.
