AZTEC CONFEDERACY. The name Aztecs (properly Aztecas) is currently used for all the Nahua (q.v.) tribes in Mexico at the time of the Spanish conquest. It belongs at most only to the seven more closely cognate tribes which occupied the valley of Mexico, and is by some restricted to the one tribe which built Tenochtitlan, or Mexico City, and is so used for convenience here. The name is from the unidentified place (generally assumed as northward) whence they came, Aztlan, vari ously interpreted as °heron pine,'" "heron clan place,'" "white place° and the best opinion makes it Jalisco or Michoacan, on the west coast of Mexico. Apparently some time from the 9th to the Ilth century they invaded the plateau of Anahuac ("waterside,° lake district), where tribes of the same stock were already living, and took possession of several commanding points; the chief pueblo being that of the Aztecs or Toltecs at ToIlan (now Tula), some 40 miles north of Mexico City, a leading pass from the north into the valley of Mexico. Driven from this by the warfare of the other natives the Aztecs moved south into the valley, and established them selves in the salt marshes where the outlet of lakes Chalco and Xochimilico flows into Lake Tezcuco, or Texcoco, amid which in 1325 (the first absolutely sure date in their history) they built Tenochtitlan, now the City of Mexico. They converted it by dikes and causeways into an island, and gradually made it another Venice, a stone town intersected with canals, the strongest position in Mexico. For more than a century, however, they were tributary to the great pueblo of Azcaputzalco, near them on the western shore of the lake. Gradually they formed a stable military organization and more stable civil society; in 1375 they elected their first "chief of war chief and priest in one— Acamapichtli, often styled in books "the founder of the Mexican empires ; and under the fourth chief, Izcoatzin, allied themselves with Tezcuco on the eastern lake shore. The two destroyed Azcaputzalco about 1430 and deported the surviving inhabitants to Tlacopan, near Mexico, which was made tributary to the latter. Tenochtitlan, Tezcuco and Tlacopan then formed a league (the Aztec Confederacy, for merly termed the "Aztec empire°), purely for plunder and tribute not at all for government or incorporation. The tribute was not only of food and similar supplies, a certain amount of land being cultivated for the benefit of the con federacy, but what was still more coveted, human victims for their gods, to be afterward eaten by themselves; sometimes of warriors for raids on others. The spoil was divided into five parts, Tenochtitlan and Tezcuco each taking two and Tlacopan one. In less than a century of life, this league made some 30 pueblo towns tributary, principally to the east toward the mill and southeast toward the Isthmus of Tehuantepec — a range of 8,000 or 10,000 square miles out of the 767,097 in the present Mexico. Even this was in no sense a military occupation of the country, much less the foun dation of a state. Within a few dozen miles were great independent pueblos such as Cholula and Tlascala, the latter a strong and warlike settlement of some 30,000 people, who waged war to the knife with the Aztec Confederacy, defeated their plundering assaults again and again, and aided other pueblos in resistance. Montezuma (q.v.), who acceded 1502, was heavily defeated by them and by the towns in Michoacan, but won success on the gulf coast; and when the Spaniards came, the southern Mexican Peninsula was a mass of seething sav age hatreds and feuds, no two tribes of the natives having any community of feeling or interest that could prompt them to unite with one another rather than with the foreigner. See COMAS; MEXICO; MONTEZUMA.
The Aztec tribe was divided into 20 clans or calpullis, each clan occupying several con tiguous communal houses, each of which held several hundred persons; besides a clan office building where assemblies were held and strangers entertained. It was governed by an
elected council, with a civil and a military head as in Rome, the latter being also constable. Each clan had its special rites, priests and tem ple. It was divided into four phratries, each having among other duties that of exacting compensation for murders, and each ward had its own precinct, constituting four wards or quarters of the town, its arsenal and its cap tain. These captains were called “darthouse man,'" "man-slasher," bloodshedder° and "chief of the eagle and the latter being chief executioner, and not eligible for the chieftain ship of the tribe. The supreme government of the Aztecs was by a council of from each clan, who must not be a sachem, but a member of the clan council; he was called the ospeaker,° and the tribal council the °speech place° (parliament, literally). It met every 10 days at least, and oftener if called together. Once in 80 days there was a special session at tended by all the leading clan and phratry offi cials and priests, to reconsider unpopular de cisions. The tribe, too, had a dual executive, civil and religious: a sachem who was civil magistrate and chief judge; and a war chief called "chief of men,'" and who exercised also some priestly functions, though there was a high priest. He was originally chief only of the Aztecs; but about 1430 (probably on oc casion of the destruction of Azcaputzalco), was made chief of the confederate army. He was elected by the tribal council and the clan war chiefs and leading priests, and could be de posed by them. His official residence was in the tribal office. From the time of the first chief, Acamapichtli, the office remained in a single family, like the old Aryan kingship.
The social and religious organization was 'a peduliar mixture of the lowest barbarism and the beginnings of civilization. There was no private property in land or dwellings;' each man could keep a garden plot for his use, but it was his no longer than he nsed it. Family life had emerged from savage promiscuity; de scent was reckoned in the male line, marital infidelity was punished, and remaining unmar ried was not permitted except by special dis pensation,— contumacy being punished by be ing made an outcast, a serf if a man and a prostitute if a woman. Slavery had thus began in a small way; but the habitual use of pris oners of war as slaves had not, it being pref erable to sacrifice and eat them. Agriculture was still primitive; but irrigation was practised to some extent, and horticulture was beginning to develop. The roads were only narrow trails; but they facilitated collection of tribute, and - served military and trading purposes as well. The houses were generally of adobe brick, but many of the great pueblos were of stone, so that the towns looked like castellated cities. There were tessellated marble floors, finely worked and colored tapestries, and beautiful feather-work, vases, goblets and censers of. fine marbles and precious metals exquisitely wrought. There were regular weekly markets, which, though trade was by barter, indicated a large development of personal property and of superfluity above subsistence. There were elaborate pleasure-grounds, menageries, and aviaries, baths and fountains and pleasure per formances of dramas and singers, acrobats and jugglers. Yet the people were cannibals, and their religion was of the most hideous charac ter, albeit with regularly organized priesthood and temples and altars. Consule Biart, L., 'The Aztecs: Their History, Manners and Customs' (Chicago 1905) ; Joyce, T. A., 'Mexican Archz ologno (New York and London 1914) ; Taft, G. E., 'Chimalman> (New York 1916).