The civilization of ancient Mexico / by Lewis Spence.

  • Spence, Lewis, 1874-1955.
Date:
1912
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The civilization of ancient Mexico / by Lewis Spence. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    43/148 (page 31)
    The centre of interest now shifts to the valley of Mexico, and to the pueblos grouped round the lakes of Tzumpanco, Xaltocan, Xochimilco, Texcuco, and Chaleo (see map). These settlements numbered about fifty at the period of the Spanish Conquest, the most important of them being the states which surrounded the Lake of Texcuco. They had early acquired com- mercial importance through fostering the industry ot salt refining, procuring the mineral from the lake by which they dwelt, and bartering it with the natives of other pueblos, who employed it in the preserving of flesh, and used it with their food. These lacustrine settlements grouped themselves round the rival states of Azcapozalco on the western side of the lake, and Texcuco on its eastern shores, and a fierce competi- tion between these nuclei ended in the defeat of the former by its subservient pueblos, about a century before the advent of the Spanish Conquerors. The settlements which thus overthrew Azcapozalco at- tached themselves to Texcuco and its ally Tlacopan, and ultimately overran the entire territory of Mexico from the Mexican Gulf to the Pacific, with the exception of the hostile and necessarily boycotted districts of Tlaxcallan or Tlascala, the people of which existed solely for the provision of Mexican sacrifices, the “holy city” of Cholula, and the pueblo of Huexotzinco. Texcuco, or Tezcuco may be regarded as of Otomi