Aztecs in their own words

In 1579, a son was born to a well-to-do indigenous family living in the town of Amaquemecan, New Spain (encompassing today’s Mexico). His parents gave him the Christian name Domingo, but he was also sometimes called Chimalpahin, meaning ‘He Ran with a Shield’ in their language, Nahuatl. It had been his great-great-grandfather’s name.

The boy had a happy childhood, growing up in a four-sided complex of adobe rooms surrounding a bright, flower-filled patio where much of the women’s daily work of spinning, weaving and tortilla-making was done. Outside the home lay fields of corn and beans in which the men laboured. Chimalpahin’s family was a proud one: they were related to the nobility of the kingdom of Chalco, of which Amaquemecan had been a part. Chalco, though at one time conquered by the Aztecs of nearby Tenochtitlán (now Mexico City), had grown to be that people’s close ally. Together they dominated the central valley of Mexico, and the Aztecs governed much of the surrounding land as well. In the 1580s, Amaquemecan might have seemed like a backwater, but Chimalpahin was well aware that it had been a player in the days of the