They said, for example, that after Shield Flower died, the survivors among her people were given land by the king of Culhuacan, in exchange for which they had to act as his servants. He entertained himself by giving them impossible tasks and threatening them with dire punishment if they failed to perform them. They had to move a chinampa (a farmable field built in swampy ground by constructing a basketry-style fence and filling it with earth—nothing could be less movable); they had to capture a deer without piercing its hide or breaking its bones; they had to defeat an enemy unarmed. In each
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