According to their legends, the Aztecs once lived on an island called Aztlan. It was from this ancestral home that they derived their name. Here they went about in boats and fished the reedy waters of the surrounding lagoon. They were a simple people and perhaps even barbarians when the great civilization of Teotihuacan rose and fell in the Valley of Mexico.

In later years when they had built a great empire, the Aztecs told conflicting stories about these early days. On the one hand, they saw themselves as one of the primitive nomad tribes that periodically descended on the more advanced civilizations of Mexico from the deserts of the north. On the other, they imagined that even their simple homeland boasted a pyramid and a temple.

As lowly hunters and gatherers, their communication with the world of spirit would have been through the medium of a shaman. But their legends say that it was through the mouth of a priest that their god spoke to them one day, telling the people that he would lead them to their real home in the south.

So they packed up their few possessions, and crossing over to the mainland they set out on their great migration. And going forward before them, inspiring them by signs and words of encouragement, was their god, Huitzilopochtli.

Some say that they first came to a cave in a curved mountain, and here Huitzilopochtli spoke to them in the guise of a hummingbird. Others say that there were seven caves and that the Aztecs, like other peoples of ancient Mexico, were born here as from a womb in the earth.

And on they traveled, living off the land, stopping from time to time to plant and harvest a crop. In the course of these wanderings, Huitzilopochtli abandoned his sister, who was also traveling with them. This sister, Malinalxoch, was a sorceress. She caused people to eat snakes and scorpions. Huitzilopochtli thought she was evil, so he forsook her.

"Sorcery is not my way," Huitzilopochtli told his people. "My way is war."

Henceforth, at the bidding of their god, the Aztecs were to call themselves Mexica. This is the name by which the Spanish Conquistadors would know them.

The Aztecs trudged on until they came to Chapultepec, today the site of a pleasant park in Mexico City. Here Huitzilopochtli told his people to prepare for battle. Sure enough his sister Malinalxoch, the sorceress who had been left behind on the journey, was at this moment reminding her son, Copil, how she had been abandoned while she slept beside the trail.

Copil, who was an even greater sorcerer than his mother, vowed to destroy Huitzilopochtli. But despite his abilities as a shape-shifter, the Aztecs captured him and cut out his heart. Huitzilopochtli told them to take it to the nearby lagoon and throw it as far away as they could.

The Aztecs moved on in their great migration, but nowhere did the more established peoples of the Valley allow them to settle. Huitzilopochtli knew that his people would not find their final home until they were driven to it, so he inspired them to ask the powerful new chief of Culhuacan for his daughter to be their goddess. The chief complied, thinking to ally himself with these hardy survivors.

Then the Aztecs killed the princess, removed her skin and clad one of their priests in it. In this way, she became their goddess, symbol of the fertile new growth that sprouts from the dried husk of the old. They invited the king of Culhuacan to a special ceremony. Unsuspecting, he entered the temple in darkness and began to burn an offering of incense. In the light of the burner he saw the priest dressed in his daughter's skin. Beside himself with rage, he exhorted his people to wipe out the Aztecs.

A great battle was joined, and the Aztecs were driven to the shores of a lagoon. Using their shields as rafts, they sought sanctuary beyond the reeds, among the small islands. With the enemies of Culhuacan pressing down on them, the situation was desperate. That night Huitzilopochtli appeared to one of the tribal leaders in a dream.

"In the morning rise up and seek a cactus standing among the reeds," said the god. "On it will be perched an eagle, pecking at a cactus fruit."

That heart-shaped fruit, indeed the cactus itself, was special to the Mexica. For it had grown from the heart of Copil that had been cast into the lagoon. Here they must build their city, Tenochtitlan. Here they must await the surrounding enemies and conquer them one and all.

And indeed it came to pass that on the morrow, the tribal elder set forth leading the people, and they came upon the cactus on which the eagle spread its wings and pecked its food, bowing its head in reverence as the Aztecs approached. Here was founded Tenochtitlan. The tribe had come full circle, starting out and ending up on an island in a lagoon. This was the year 2 House, by our calendar 1325.

The foregoing is based on the Crónica Mexicayotl, as translated by Thelma D. Sullivan in Markman and Markman (1992).