the child who was groomed as the heir was called Huitzilihuitl, Hummingbird Feather, in honor of the thirteenth-century chief of that name. Besides his full siblings—the other children of Acamapichtli’s noble Culhua wife—Huitzilihuitl had many half brothers, among them Itzcoatl. Obsidian Snake’s mother had been no one of any importance. She had been, in fact, a slave—a beautiful slave girl from the nearby town of Azcapotzalco (Ahz-ka-po-TZAL-ko).
