A Brief History of the Aztecs

The Mexicas, known as the Aztecs now, started off as a group of nomadic wanders in the 13 A.D. who had been looking for a piece of land in Mexico to start new. They came upon a place in the Valley of Mexico to a marshy island that was near a big lake but that area is now known as Mexico City. They saw an eagle perched on some cactus so they took it as a sign to build their new settlement there. They way they started to become more powerful they allied themselves with more powerful tribes surrounding them so in case a conflict came to be they would have other tribes help them since there are just starting off to them become a huge power later on. The surrounding this manmade island was water and mountains and also allied tribes, but mostly green vegetations.

The climate in this region where they lived was hot and humid. Since they lived on a lake, they built canals that would bring fresh water from the mountain springs to provide them with water and to also use the water to keep their island clean.

When the seasons of little rain happened, they would ask other tribes surrounding them to help them with their water shortage, since there canals were build connected to these other tribes they would just open a canal and water was given to them. When the rainy season would come around, sometimes they would have to evacuate their island because the water would rise and flood their island and would go to neighboring tribes for refuge. Not only would they use the canals for water but they would also fish out of them for fish and also so shrimp there but since they could walk to the ocean, they would harvest crab, oysters, and also other fish. But the land surrounding them were different animals that they also depended on. Rabbit, snakes,...

... middle of paper ...

....

The Aztec Empire collapsed due to the Spanish colonization of the Americas. Cortes a Spanish conquistador went to the capitol Tenochtitla where he was greeted nicely since the Aztec people have never seen such light skinned people. Once Cortez figured the weapons the Aztec had weren’t up to date with their weapons, he decided to take over the capital and hold Montezuma, the emperor at the time, as hostage. Montezuma would later die while in captivity, which made his young nephew Cuauhtemoc in charge of the empire. Cuauhtemoc would later dive out Cortes from the capitol, but on August 13, 1521 Cortes rallied up rival tribes of the Aztec to help them take out Cuauhtemoc and his resistance which would kill 240,000 people that would die out the Aztec population. Cortes later destroyed the city and built up from the ruins to make a new city now known as Mexico City.