IN WHICH ARE SET FORTH THE COMPLEX EVENTS, POLITICAL,
SOCIAL AND CULTURAL, WHICH LED UP TO THE FORMATION
OF AZTEC CIVILIZATION

THE SUCCEEDING ERA in Mexican history, 1100-1300, was a
chaotic one which eventually resulted in that mixture of cul-
tural unity and political independence which we know as the
Aztec civilization. A tempting analogy is to compare the Toltec-
Chichimec period to the European colonization of North America,
where groups of many conditions and sorts struggled to populate
the land and eventually incorporated the sum total of their experi-
ence into the North American republic.

Religions and social systems and peoples competed for domina-
tion of the Valley. Several of the powerful groups at the time of
the Conquest had their origin in this era of confusion, and from
their annals we may extract a fairly clear picture of what went on.
As each community recorded its own affairs with relatively little
attention to those of its neighbors, cross references are rare. His-
tory, in our modern sense of utilizing past trends to chart the
present and the future, did not exist in the intellectual structure
of ancient Mexico, and the traditions of the successive immigra-
tions are in confusing disagreement (Table IV).

The histories of five towns summarize this period: Culhuacan,
Texcoco, Azcapotzalco, Cholula, and Tenochtitlan ( Table VI ).
According to the Annals of Cuauhtitlan, a long, confused record
referring to Culhuacan, Tenochtitlan and the politically insignifi-
cant Cuauhtitlan, the Culhuas conquered the Toltecs and lived

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