The town they built would be called Tenochtitlan,30 and it would soon have a tlatoani, or king, and be beholden to no one else. This was what Shield Flower’s father had attempted to orchestrate years before, but he had acted prematurely. A generation or two later, in the mid-1300s, the Mexica were better prepared to defend themselves, and this time they began with no rash implicit declarations of war against their neighbors.
