Fifth Sun: A New History of the Aztecs

by Camilla Townsend

In general, the Nahuas struggled to come up with terms that would apply to the Spaniards. In their world, everybody was named for the place from which they came (the Tenochca from Tenochtitlan, the Tlaxcalteca from Tlaxcala, the Culhuaque from Culhuacan, etc.). If a person’s geographical origins were unknown, then it wasn’t clear what to call him. The newcomers presented a problem in this regard. The only element that rapidly became clear was that the strangers considered themselves to be representatives of their god. That made sense to the Nahuas. Until they were certain what the name of the newcomers’ god was—and the strangers used a confusing array of terms—it apparently seemed most logical to refer to them by a word that conveyed they were the representatives of a revered divinity.35 Their choice of labels apparently left even some of their own grandchildren believing that the white men really had been considered gods. The fact remained that those grandchildren desperately needed to come to terms with the conquest. That their ancestors had been benighted savages, as the Spaniards sometimes said, they knew to be false. But their ancestors could perhaps have made a mistake of this nature, and if they had, it might explain a great deal.36