Who were the Aztec?
As Rosemary Joyce puts it: ” ‘Aztec’ is the term that came into general use in European histories in the eighteenth century, to label the political power that united the largest part of Central America before the Spanish conquest in the sixteenth century. The word remains the conventional term to refer to this political power, and to the people who formed it. But in fact the Aztec polity was made up of many different peoples [20 or so ethnic groups], an estimated fifty cities in the Valley of Mexico, and perhaps 250 others outside that area. Most discussions focus only on one of these peoples: the inhabitants of Tenochtitlan, who called themselves the Mexica. Along with many of their neighbours, they spoke and wrote in the Nahuatl language. Alone among those neighbours, they maintained a mythological tradition of origin and wandering as the chosen people of the patron god Huitzilopochtli.” it could also be called the Tenochca empire (after dwellers of Tenochtitlan) Triple Alliance: Tex
