DECEMBER 11, 2000

Q: From where do we derive our knowledge of the trek from Aztlán to Mexico City?

A: Well there are a number of difference codices. All of the major codices in the Valley of Mexico have some reference to it. The one that I was just looking at was the Codice of Chimalpopoca. He outlines the different places where the migration from Aztlán took place. One of the codices specifically mentions Aztlán was in Nuevo Mexico. But there are several of them that do that.
The Spaniards learned about Aztlán from talking with surviving Mexicanos, and other people of the Valley of Mexico, after the conquest. They undoubtably inquired about where these people had come from, what their history was, that kind of thing. The codices that we have, most of them were not written down until later. So I suspect that it’s the oral information that is prior, but we also have the written codices that mention the migration of the Mexitín, as they’re called, the Mexitín or Aztecas, from the North. But with the Coronado expedition already heading towards the North in 1540, I suspect that it was oral information that primarily motivated them.

Q: If we had to look for Aztlán in the American Southwest, where might we look?

A: Given the descriptions of Aztlán that we have, there are a number of different locations where you could look. For one thing, we have to remember that the Mexitín or Aztecans may have settled several different places as they migrated southward. And so the descriptions may relate not to the original place, but to a place where they stayed for awhile, on their way. There are a number of places along the Gulf of California, for instance, which would meet that requirement. In fact, one of the rivers, perhaps the Rio Yaqui, was known by the Spaniards as the Rio Aztatlán, and that could mean, of course, that it was the route that was followed on the way to Aztlán, or it could mean something else. But it is possible that they did settle for a while along the coast.
I think that there are a number of possibilities. I don’t think that we always have to be looking for each different item in the place where we might think that Aztlán would be. Because as we know about Yuman history, things are elaborated as time goes by, and different things from different places get merged together. As a thousand years goes by, or five hundred years. So I think that there are a number of places.
One thing that’s interesting to me, is that in the Valley of Mexico, in modern times, we have a language group from the North, still present in the Sierra, between the Valley of Mexico and Vera Cruz. These people are known as Tepejuanes. The Tepejuanes, or as they call themselves, O’odham, also live in the Sierra down as far as Nayarit, just north of the Huitcholo and Cora, and extend up, primarily into Durango, and then they are the same people as the Pima and Papago. Going all the way up to the Gila River. So it’s interesting that you find here in northern Uto-Aztecan dialect, or Nahuatl related dialect, that of the O’odham, still being spoken in the area of the Valley of Mexico.
Now how did these Tepejuanes get down there? Well it’s possible that they were one of the Mexitín groups that didn’t lose their language. In other words, instead of joining the others at the lake, and eventually taking up Nahuatl, they actually retained their northern dialect. I think that’s a very interesting clue. The O’odham extended as far north as the Rio Gila, in more recent times, just about to the mouth of the Gila and the Colorado River. And in fact when the Oñate expedition came down the Colorado River in 1605, they said the people at the junction spoke the same language as Tepejuan. Now, that could mean that they were simply visiting there with the Cuachan, or the Yuma people, who speak a different language altogether. As they frequently did in later years. Or it could mean at that time they were living as far as the junction of the Gila in Colorado. The O’odham people have a very complex history, as you know, being associated with the ruin of Casa Grande near Sacatón, now in the state of Arizona, and also associated with the number of important groupings such as the Pimas of El Soba. The Pimas of El Soba were Pimas living along the Rio Alta, which is just down in Sonora, just below the Arizona-Sonora boundary. And also the Soba Ipuri were inhabiting the San Pedro River valley. Now the name Soba probably comes from an O’odham tradition about a ruler that ruled Casa Grande. I think it’s called something like Sivani. And from Siva, I believe, comes the Spanish corruption, Sova. And he was a ruler who was eventually driven away, and his people. Because he was cruel, or something like that. So they moved somewhere else. And there is another O’odham tradition, also, that the people that formerly lived at the Casa Grande went first to the Colorado River and lived for a while. After that, they went around to the east, somewhere. And it is interesting that, on the Rio Grande, that the junction with the Rio Conchos, in northern Chihuahua, the Hulin people, who lived in pueblos, terraced adobe pueblos,[at] the time of Spanish contact. The Hulin are said by the author of a book on the Tepejuan language, to speak a language closely related to Tepejuan. So we have the O’odham kind of speaking people, again, Uto-Aztecan speaking people, spread all the way from [the] southern half of Arizona and the Colorado River, all the way to the Rio Grande, around La Junta del los Rios, where the Conchos River comes in, and then all the way down to the Valley of Mexico, practically. So this is a very interesting group, and I’m not sure that it provides us with a final answer, but it does give us an example that there were definite language contacts between the Valley of Mexico and the Arizona region.