For the career of the Aztec in Mexico we have a respectable historical literature,[1] but for the want of dated sculptures cannot establish so remote a chronology as for the Maya. The tabulated list gives us a few of the most important dates, though all those preceding 1325 A.D. are but crude approximations.
A.D. | MEXICAN CHRONOLOGY | |
300 | (?) | Toltec cities founded, Tula, Teotihuacan, etc. |
700 | (?) | Totonac settled in the State of Vera Cruz. |
1200 | (?) | Tarascan established a state in Michoacan. |
1325 | Founding of Mexico City by the Aztec. | |
1370 | Tri-partite confederacy, Mexico, Tezcoco, and Tlacopan. | |
1473 | Tlatilulco subjected by Aztec. | |
1487 | The great temple of Mexico City built—famous for human sacrifices. | |
1521 | Cortez captures Mexico City. |
The list of Aztec rulers as given by Sahagun is as follows, the dates being approximate:—
Name | Length of Rule | Probable Dates | |
1. | Acampich | 21 | 1370-1391 |
2. | Uitziliuitl | 21 | 1391-1412 |
3. | Chimalpopoca | 10 | 1412-1422 |
4. | Itzcoatzin | 14 | 1422-1436 |
5. | Moteuhçoma | 30 | 1436-1466 |
6. | Axayacatl | 14 | 1466-1480 |
7. | Tigocicatzin | 4 | 1480-1484 |
8. | Auitzotl | 18 | 1484-1502 |
9. | Moteuhcoma | 19 | 1502-1521 |
The career of the Aztec rulers appears closely parallel both as to time and extent to that of the Inca in Peru, but both were later than the rise of the Maya. The similar dominance of the rulers of Bogota in Colombia should be noted, though historians have been less successful in projecting their chronology. The three examples we have given, therefore, exhaust the list of historical chronologies for the New World. Among the less cultured tribes there are a few feeble efforts to compile chronologies. The Kiowa and Dakota of the North American Plains have a kind of year count, but this does not reach beyond the period of colonization and so has no significance
- ↑ Anales de Cuauhtitlan, 1886. I.