Fifth Sun: A New History of the Aztecs

by Camilla Townsend

On one occasion the Spaniards reached a neighborhood no one had thought they would reach until the next day. They began to seize the women and children who had not yet evacuated. A warrior named Axoquentzin (Ah-sho-KEN-tzeen) came running. His rage seemed to lend him superhuman strength. He ran out into the open and picked up a Spaniard and whirled him around until he dropped a girl whom he had seized. Then Axoquentzin picked up another man and flung him about. But this sort of action couldn’t go on forever, and the Spaniards brought him down: “They shot an iron bolt into his heart. He died as if he were stretching out when going to sleep.” Thirty years later, such stories lived on in the people’s collective memory and in the songs they sang. The fearlessness of their greatest warriors made them deeply proud.52