Nezahualcóyotl

Aztec ruler (r. 1431-1472)

• Born: 1402
• Birthplace: Probably Texcoco (now in Mexico)
• Died: 1472
• Place of death: Texcoco (now in Mexico)

Nezahualcóyotl, who was primarily responsible for the creation of the Aztec Empire, was a proponent of a religious vision that, if it had prevailed, might have made possible that empire’s survival.

Early Life

Nezahualcóyotl (nehz-zah-wahl-KOY-yoh-tuhl), which means “hungry coyote,” was the son of Ixtlilxóchitl, king of Texcoco, and therefore a descendant of Xólotl, who led a Chichimec tribe into the northern part of the Valley of Mexico in the mid-thirteenth century and established the kingdom of Alcolhuacán. Quinatzin, who established his Alcolhuacán capital at Texcoco in 1318, was the great-grandson of Xólotl and the great-grandfather of Nezahualcóyotl, who also had connection with the Mexica Aztecs of Tenochtitlán through his mother, Matlalcihuatzin, who was the daughter of a Tenochtitlán king.

The childhood of Nezahualcóyotl was a time of great peril for the royal house of Alcolhuacán because of the wars fought in the valley in the period before the rise of the Mexica Aztecs of Tenochtitlán. The arena of these wars was a relatively small area in the vicinity of what is now called Mexico City, and the powers engaged were all cities on or near the shores of Lake Texcoco or on its islands. Because the various codices on which one depends for knowledge of these events were written from memory after the Spanish Conquest, they do not agree in detail, but their description of the wars that tore apart the Valley of Mexico in the years before Nezahualcóyotl came to the throne of Texcoco are in agreement on the basic events.

The dominant power on the western shore of the lake was the Tepanecans of Azcapotzalco, whose great King Tezozómoc, though he was himself a grandson of Xólotl, was determined to extend his control over the valley by conquering Texcoco, which dominated the country between the lake and the mountains to the east. In 1412, Tezozómoc launched a three-pronged attack, sending armies against Alcolhuacán around the north and south ends of the lake and sending his Mexican allies from Tenochtitlán directly across the lake in their war canoes. Ixtlilxóchitl repulsed the southern attack and drove off the war canoes; then, in a war that lasted three years, he defeated the armies of Tezozómoc in every battle in the country north of the lake and laid siege to Azcapotzalco itself.

At this point, Tezozómoc sued for peace, and Ixtlilxóchitl, who had virtually won the war, magnanimously chose not to demand unconditional surrender. This stance ensured his own downfall, because Tezozómoc chose not to abide by the terms of the peace treaty, which called for both sides to disarm. In 1418, he launched a treacherous attack, and Ixtlilxóchitl was defeated and forced to flee to the mountains with Nezahualcóyotl. There, hiding in the branches of a tree, the boy saw his father make his last stand before he was cut down by the pursuing Tepanecans. From that moment, apparently, Nezahualcóyotl was determined to have his vengeance on Azcapotzalco.

Though the chronicles may rely only on popular legend, they all suggest that after fleeing across the mountains to Tlaxcala, where he found refuge with relatives, Nezahualcóyotl spent the next few years traveling incognito in Alcolhuacán, preparing his people for the day when he would lead them in a war of liberation against Azcapotzalco. In any case, during this period, he was in great peril as a result of a reward posted by Tezozómoc, and he eventually was captured at Chalco, a city on the southeast shore of the lake subject to Tezozómoc. According to the chronicles, Tezozómoc ordered him caged and starved to death, but his guards, remembering the greatness of his father, secretly fed him. Later, when he was to be put to death, one of his guards permitted him to escape and was killed in his place.

Eventually in 1425 according to one account two of his aunts, related to the royal houses of both Texcoco and Azcapotzalco, persuaded Tezozómoc to permit the young prince to return, and he was allowed to live in Texcoco and with his mother’s relatives in Tenochtitlán. In his last days, however, Tezozómoc regretted giving the prince even this limited freedom and sent an assassin to kill him. Again, Nezahualcóyotl survived as a result of the prestige he enjoyed as the son of Ixtlilxóchitl; the assassin warned him of the plot.

In 1426, Tezozómoc died. Nezahualcóyotl, as an Aztec prince related by blood or marriage to all the royal houses of the valley, attended the funeral, apparently keeping his own counsel as he observed the final rites performed for the tyrant against whom he had sworn vengeance. Even then the sons of Tezozómoc were arguing about the succession, and Nezahualcóyotl, whose political instincts were strong, must have been planning the conspiracy by which he would destroy them and their city. The accession of Maxtla to the throne of Azcapotzalco in 1426 set in motion the events that led eventually to the destruction of Azcapotzalco, the rise of Tenochtitlán to prominence, and the return of Nezahualcóyotl to his rightful place on the throne of Texcoco.

Life’s Work

In 1420, Tezozómoc had rewarded his allies in Tenochtitlán with suzerainty over Texcoco. Now with Tezozómoc’s death, Chimalpopoca, the king of Tenochtitlán, granted the rule of Texcoco to Nezahualcóyotl, who immediately conspired with Chimalpopoca against Azcapotzalco’s new king, Maxtla. The plot was a failure, and Nezahualcóyotl was again forced to flee. In 1427, however, Chimalpopoca was killed either by agents of Maxtla or by the most aggressive elements in Tenochtitlán itself and Ixtcóatl (or Itzcóatl, as the name is also transliterated) succeeded him on the throne of Tenochtitlán. The way was now prepared for the alliance that would bring Maxtla down.

Though Maxtla’s henchmen ruled in Texcoco, Nezahualcóyotl was able to call on the goodwill he had earned among the people in the other cities east of the lake during his exile. The alliance of these cities now became part of a grander alliance of all those city-states that had grievances against Azcapotzalco. They were a mixed lot. Besides Nezahualcóyotl’s cities, the alliance included his allies in Huexotzinco and Tlaxcala beyond the mountains east of the lake, Cuauhtitlán on the northwest shore of the lake, and Tlacopán on the west shore. Above all, it included Tenochtitlán. These Mexica Aztecs had fought against Nezahualcóyotl’s father, they had opposed Nezahualcóyotl himself, and they had reduced him for a time to the status of a tribute-paying prince. He knew that the alliance against Azcapotzalco would not succeed without their warriors, however, and the alliance that resulted was primarily the result of his recognition of the political realities of the valley. Tenochtitlán, more or less imprisoned on its island in the lake, needed land, and Nezahualcóyotl used this land-hunger as a means of wreaking vengeance on Azcapotzalco.

As a result, he took a force of his best warriors to Tenochtitlán to aid in its defense. Maxtla’s Tepanecans attacked across the causeways that linked Tenochtitlán to the western shore, and the Mexica and Nezahualcóyotl’s Acolhua repulsed it. Meanwhile, armies from Huexotzinco and Tlaxcala were advancing on Azcapotzalco from the north. In 1428, the allies laid siege to Azcapotzalco and eventually destroyed it. The primary result of the victory was the ascendancy of Tenochtitlán in the political and military life of the valley and the rise to dominance of the most warlike and aggressive elements in that city.

Nezahualcóyotl remained in Tenochtitlán for several years, even building a palace there, while planning his campaign to regain the throne of Texcoco from the henchmen of Maxtla. The Mexica, keeping their part of the bargain, assisted him from 1429 to 1430 in the recovery of Texcoco. Now firmly allied with Tenochtitlán, he assisted them in their campaigns against the other cities on the shores of the lake, including Coyoacán and Xochimilco. In 1433, the fall of Cuitláhuac ended the Tepaneca War.

In 1431, Nezahualcóyotl was crowned emperor of the three-city league of Texcoco, Tenochtitlán, and Tlacopán, which he, more than anyone, had created. He realized that the kind of empire his ancestor Xólotl had achieved, a single state ruled by a single overlord, was no longer possible. Peace in the Valley of Mexico, therefore, depended on the maintenance of a loose confederation of the Acolhua of Texcoco, the Mexica of Tenochtitlán, and the Tepaneca of Tlacopán. Whatever the faults of this “empire,” it endured until the Spanish Conquest.

In 1433, Nezahualcóyotl returned to Texcoco and embarked on a program that inaugurated that city’s golden age and made it the most beautiful city in the Valley of Mexico and its intellectual and cultural center. He was a patron of science, industry, art, and literature; he was himself a poet of considerable renown; and he encouraged the creation of historical archives that at the time of the Spanish Conquest were the most extensive in Mexico.

In 1440, when King Itzcóatl of Tenochtitlán died, Nezahualcóyotl rededicated himself to the friendship of the three cities and gave his support in the election of a new king to Montezuma I. Apparently he believed that Montezuma would be a less ambitious threat than any other candidate to the integrity of Alcolhuacán and was willing to make concessions to ensure this election, which in time proved to be disastrous. The Mexica under Montezuma’s leadership became the dominant power in the valley, though Nezahualcóyotl continued as emperor.

In 1450, when torrential rains raised the level of the lake and flooded Tenochtitlán, Nezahualcóyotl, who was perhaps the most distinguished engineer and builder in Mexico before the conquest, proposed the great dike that stretched nine miles north to south down the lake and isolated Tenochtitlán from the east side of the lake, which received the heaviest runoff from the mountains. In the next few years, however, the Valley of Mexico was afflicted with a long drought. Nezahualcóyotl distributed food from his own supplies and resisted the charge of some of his subjects that the gods had withheld the rain because Nezahualcóyotl had neglected to maintain the rites of human sacrifice. Characteristically, he preferred to build an extensive irrigation system to bring water from the mountains.

Nezahualcóyotl’s antipathy to human sacrifice, which is in itself enough to make him the most remarkable political figure of his time and place, apparently derived from his sympathy with the cult of Tloque Nahuaque. This god, who was assumed to be unfathomable, all-present, and formless, was the one god in the pantheon that did not demand human sacrifice, and in the encouragement of his cult, Nezahualcóyotl seems clearly to have been attempting to lead his people toward a religion based on a benevolent monotheism.

One of Nezahualcóyotl’s concessions to Montezuma was his agreement to assist his ally in future wars of aggression. From 1455 to 1458, therefore, he contributed to the success of Tenochtitlán’s war against the Mixtecs, and in 1464 he sent an army that helped Tenochtitlán destroy Chalco.

In 1467, Nezahualcóyotl completed in Texcoco the temple to the war god Huitzilopochtli, which was required as a further concession to the Mexica of Tenochtitlán. In the same year he completed a temple to the peaceful, benevolent Tloque Nahuaque. The coincidence of these two events must be considered an indication of the tragedy inherent both in the life of Nezahualcóyotl and in the history of Mexico. In the next half century, that tragedy would play itself out to its inevitable conclusion as the adherents of Huitzilopochtli, with their doctrine of war, aggression, and human sacrifice, would triumph over the cult of peace and benevolence of which Nezahualcóyotl had been the champion.

Significance

Nezahualcóyotl was a supreme example of the Aztec knight, but he was also a poet, a lawgiver, a skillful politician and diplomat often called on to mediate disputes, a builder and engineer, and a great patron of culture and learning. When he dedicated the temple to Huitzilopochtli in 1467 which in the Aztec calendar was called One Reed he predicted that when One Reed returned in fifty-two years, the Aztec Empire would be destroyed. This prediction, along with the popular assumption that the benevolent god Quetzalcóatl would return in One Reed, was part of a complex of fears that haunted the last years of Aztec supremacy in Mexico with visions of the end of their civilization.

The demands of the Aztec war god for ever-increasing gifts of blood caused wars waged to capture sacrificial victims and ultimately dissension within the empire, which an astute conqueror would find easy to exploit. For this reason, Nezahualcóyotl’s political decision to make concessions to Tenochtitlán and thus to the cult of Huitzilopochtli for the sake of peace within the empire must be considered an unfortunate development in the religious history of Mexico. If he had been able to unite the empire under the protection of a god of brotherhood and benevolence, the Spanish Conquest would undoubtedly have been more difficult. As it happened, however, when One Reed came around again (in 1519), it brought the Spanish and, as Nezahualcóyotl had predicted, the destruction of the civilization of which he was the outstanding representative.

Bibliography

Brundage, Burr C. A Rain of Darts: The Mexica Aztecs. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1973. Based on thorough scholarship, this book is the single most important work in English on Aztec history, with a thorough and well-balanced account of the kingdom of Alcolhuacán and the life and achievements of Nezahualcóyotl.

Gillmor, Frances. Flute of the Smoking Mirror: A Portrait of Nezahualcoyotl, Poet-King of the Aztecs. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1949. Reprint. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1983. A biography of Nezahualcóyotl, based on extensive scholarship but written in a novelistic style that requires the reader to check the narrative against the thoroughly documented end notes.

Longhena, Maria. Ancient Mexico: The History and Culture of the Maya, Aztecs, and Other Pre-Columbian Peoples. New York: Stewart, Tabori & Chang, 1998. Examination of Aztec history and culture, alongside the cultures of the Maya, the Olmecs, and other ancient civilizations, which emphasizes the importance of religion in every aspect of early people’s behavior and experience. Includes photographic plates, illustrations, maps, diagrams, and bibliographic references.

Padden, R. C. The Hummingbird and the Hawk: Conquest and Sovereignty in the Valley of Mexico, 1503-1541. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1967. Padden treats primarily Aztec affairs during the reign of the last Aztec emperor and the early colonial period, but his book also includes a useful account of the religious conflicts in Mexico during Nezahualcóyotl’s lifetime.

Peterson, Frederick A. Ancient Mexico. New York: Capricorn Books, 1962. A splendid survey of Mexican history and culture before the Spanish Conquest, with a useful discussion of Nezahualcóyotl’s achievements and their historical background.

Radin, Paul. “The Sources and Authenticity of the History of the Ancient Mexicans.” University of California Publications in American Anthropology and Ethnology 17 (1920-1926): 1-150. Includes the text of the Codex Xólotl, the most important original chronicle to discuss Nezahualcóyotl and the history of Texcoco.

Smith, Michael E. The Aztecs. 2d ed. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2003. Survey of every aspect of life in the Aztec Empire, based primarily on archaeological research of the late twentieth century. Discusses religion, politics, science, the arts, and the everyday life of ordinary people. Includes illustrations, maps, genealogical tables, bibliographic references, and index.

Townsend, Richard F. The Aztecs. Rev. ed. New York: Thames & Hudson, 2000. This survey of Aztec history begins with the conquest and fall of the empire, then goes back in time to chart the beginnings of Aztec society and its growth into an imperial power. Nezhualcóyotl is discussed throughout, and special attention is paid to his system of law. Includes illustrations, calendar of annual Aztec ceremonies, bibliography, and index.