Page:The American Indian.djvu/330

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272
THE AMERICAN INDIAN

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

  1. Anales de Cuauhtitlan, 1886. I.