Xaltocan was a

pre-Columbian In the history of the Americas, the pre-Columbian era, also known as the pre-contact era, or as the pre-Cabraline era specifically in Brazil, spans from the initial peopling of the Americas in the Upper Paleolithic to the onset of European col ...

city-state A city-state is an independent sovereign city which serves as the center of political, economic, and cultural life over its contiguous territory. They have existed in many parts of the world throughout history, including cities such as Rome, ...

and island in the

Valley of Mexico The Valley of Mexico (; ), sometimes also called Basin of Mexico, is a highlands plateau in central Mexico. Surrounded by mountains and volcanoes, the Valley of Mexico was a centre for several pre-Columbian civilizations including Teotihuacan, ...

, located in the center of Lake Xaltocan, part of an interconnected shallow lake system which included

Lake Texcoco Lake Texcoco (; ) was a natural saline lake within the ''Anahuac'' or Valley of Mexico. Lake Texcoco is best known for an island situated on the western side of the lake where the Mexica built the city of Mēxihco Tenōchtitlan, which would la ...

; this place is now inside the village of

San Miguel Jaltocan San Miguel Jaltocan is a town of Nextlalpan, in the state of Mexico State, north of Mexico Valley.Instituto Nacional de Estadística y GeografíaPrincipales resultados por localidad 2010 (ITER). See also *Xaltocan References

{{DEFAULTSO ...

in Nextlalpan,

State of Mexico The State of Mexico, officially just Mexico, is one of the 32 federal entities of the United Mexican States. Colloquially known as Edomex (from , the abbreviation of , and ), to distinguish it from the name of the whole country, it is the mo ...

. The site was originally settled by the

Otomi people The Otomi (; ) are an Indigenous people of Mexico inhabiting the central Mexican Plateau (Altiplano) region. The Otomi are an Indigenous people of the Americas who inhabit a discontinuous territory in central Mexico. They are linguistically rel ...

but following a war in the late fourteenth century where the Otomi were defeated by an alliance of Tepanecs and

Mexica The Mexica (Nahuatl: ; singular ) are a Nahuatl-speaking people of the Valley of Mexico who were the rulers of the Triple Alliance, more commonly referred to as the Aztec Empire. The Mexica established Tenochtitlan, a settlement on an island ...

the Otomi were driven off the island and relocated to Otumba, Metztitlan and

Tlaxcala Tlaxcala, officially the Free and Sovereign State of Tlaxcala, is one of the 32 federal entities that comprise the Political divisions of Mexico, Federal Entities of Mexico. It is divided into Municipalities of Tlaxcala, 60 municipalities and t ...

. The island of Xaltocan was then resettled by

Nahuatl Nahuatl ( ; ), Aztec, or Mexicano is a language or, by some definitions, a group of languages of the Uto-Aztecan language family. Varieties of Nahuatl are spoken by about Nahuas, most of whom live mainly in Central Mexico and have smaller popul ...

speakers. The name can mean either of two things in the Nahuatl language: either 'sandy ground of spiders' or 'where it is planted on the sand'.

Overview

Xaltocan is known to have been inhabited in the Postclassic period. Ceramics and other archaeological remains dating to this period have been recovered in excavations at the site. It is thought to have been a local center of power capable of exacting tribute from other city-states in the area. The founding of Xaltocan is described in the mytho-historical documents, the ''

Historia Tolteca-Chichimeca The is a 16th-century Nahuatl-language manuscript, dealing with the history of Cuauhtinchan. It is now in the in Paris. The text describes the history of the Toltecs and the Chichimecas from before the Chichimecan migration until 1544. It was ...

'' and ''Anales de Cuauhtitlan''. According to the ''Anales'' the Xaltocameca (people of Xaltocan) were among the

Chichimec Chichimeca () is the name that the Nahua peoples of Mexico generically applied to nomadic and semi-nomadic peoples who were established in present-day Bajío region of Mexico. Chichimeca carried the same meaning as the Roman term "barbarian" t ...

tribes that left the mythical place of origin,

Aztlán Aztlán (from or romanized ''Aztlán'', ) is the ancestral home of the Aztec peoples. The word "Aztec" was derived from the Nahuatl a''ztecah'', meaning "people from Aztlán." Aztlán is mentioned in several ethnohistorical sources dating from t ...

, under a leader named ''Quauhtliztac'' ("White Eagle"). The ''Historia'' also identifies the Xaltocameca as belong to the Otomi ethnic group.Davies, 1980 p. 91-93 In this document, written by Ixtlilxochitl, the first leader of the Xaltocameca is named ''Iztacquauhtli'', which also means "White Eagle" in

. Xaltocan's island location gave it certain advantages that other areas would not have had access to, such as making it easier to fortify, however one particularly noteworthy use of Xaltocan's location was to use the lake to create

chinampas Chinampa ( ) is a technique used in Mesoamerican agriculture which relies on small, rectangular areas of fertile arable land to grow crops on the shallow lake beds in the Valley of Mexico. The word chinampa has Nahuatl origins, chinampa mea ...

which played a vital role in the agriculture of Xaltocan. The chinampas would have been used to grow a variety of foods including corn, beans, squash and much more. It's been found that there was a calculable agricultural surplus in Xaltocan. In the 13th century Xaltocan were involved in a prolonged war with the Nahua city-state of Cuauhtitlan. Xaltocan was initially the strongest but around 1395 the ruler of Cuauhtitlan, Xaltemoctzin, allied himself with Tezozomoc of

Azcapotzalco Azcapotzalco ( ; ; from ''wikt:azcapotzalli, āzcapōtzalli'' “anthill” + ''wikt:-co, -co'' “place”; literally, “In the place of the anthills”) is a Boroughs of Mexico City, borough (''demarcación territorial'') in Mexico City. Azcap ...

and his subjects the

Tenochtitlan , also known as Mexico-Tenochtitlan, was a large Mexican in what is now the historic center of Mexico City. The exact date of the founding of the city is unclear, but the date 13 March 1325 was chosen in 1925 to celebrate the 600th annivers ...

and finally managed to conquer Xaltocan. The Otomi inhabitants fled north to the Otomian city-state of Metztitlan and to

, while others were allowed to resettle on the lands of Texcoco in the place that was henceforth called Otumba - "Place of the Otomies". During the next 100 years the site was resettled by Nahua peoples. After the

Aztec Triple Alliance The Aztec Empire, also known as the Triple Alliance (, �jéːʃkaːn̥ t͡ɬaʔtoːˈlóːjaːn̥ or the Tenochca Empire, was an alliance of three Nahua city-states: , , and . These three city-states ruled that area in and around the Vall ...

defeated the Tepanecs of Azcapotzalco, Xaltocan became an Aztec subject city and paid tribute to Tenochtitlan, mainly in the form of woven blankets. The Aztec resettlement of Xaltocan also caused a breakdown in several of the key institutions that were required to keep the farming in Xaltocan sustainable, this caused the chinampas to eventually be abandoned. In 1521, during the

Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire The Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire was a pivotal event in the history of the Americas, marked by the collision of the Aztec Triple Alliance and the Spanish Empire. Taking place between 1519 and 1521, this event saw the Spanish conquistad ...

, the army of

Hernán Cortés Hernán Cortés de Monroy y Pizarro Altamirano, 1st Marquis of the Valley of Oaxaca (December 1485 – December 2, 1547) was a Spanish ''conquistador'' who led an expedition that caused the fall of the Aztec Empire and brought large portions o ...

razed Xaltocan and burned it to the ground.Diaz, B., 1963, The Conquest of New Spain, London: Penguin Books,

Notes

References

* Brumfiel, E.M. & M.G. Hodge, 1996, ''Interaction in the basin of Mexico: The case of Postclassic Xaltocan''- Arqueología mesoamericana: homenaje a William T. Sanders * Brumfiel, Elizabeth M., Ed. 2005, "Production and Power at Postclassic Xaltocan" ''Arqueología de México'', No. 6, published by University of Pittsburgh Latin American Archaeology Publications and Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia (México, D.F.)389 pp. . * Brumfiel, Elizabeth M., 1996, "The Quality of Tribute Cloth: The Place of Evidence in Archaeological Argument" in ''American Antiquity, Vol. 61'' * Davies, Nigel, 1980, ''The Toltec Heritage - from the fall of Tula to the rise of Tenochtitlan'', University of Oklahoma Press. * De Lucia, Kristin. “Household Lake Exploitation and Aquatic Lifeways in Postclassic Xaltocan, Mexico.” Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, vol. 62, 2021, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaa.2021.101273. * Hodge, Mary G., and Hector Neff 2005 Xaltocan in the Economy of the Basin of Mexico: A View from Ceramic Tradewares. In Production and Power at Postclassic Xaltocan. Elizabeth M. Brumfiel, ed. Pp. 319–348. Mexico City : Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia. * Morehart, C. T. (2012), What If the Aztec Empire Never Existed? The Prerequisites of Empire and the Politics of Plausible Alternative Histories. American Anthropologist, 114: 267–281. * Morehart, Christopher T, and Destiny L Crider. “Low-Intensity Investigations at Three Small Sites along Lake Xaltocan in the Northern Basin of Mexico.” Latin American Antiquity, vol. 27, no. 2, 2016, pp. 257–263. * Morehart, Christopher T. “Chinampa Agriculture, Surplus Production, and Political Change at Xaltocan, Mexico.” Ancient Mesoamerica, vol. 27, no. 1, 2016, pp. 183–196., https://doi.org/10.1017/S0956536116000109. *Morehart, Christopher T. and Dan T.A. Eisenberg 2010 Prosperity, Power, and Change: Modeling Maize at Postclassic Xaltocan, Mexico. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 29(1):94–112. *Rodríguez-Alegría Enrique, et al. “Trade, Tribute, and Neutron Activation: The Colonial Political Economy of Xaltocan, Mexico.” Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, vol. 32, no. 4, 2013, pp. 397–414., https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaa.2013.07.001. *Romero Navarrete Omar 2007 La gloria de Xaltocan: los guerreros del sol. Mexico, D.F. : Talleres de Luis Gonzalez Obregon {{coord, display=title Archaeological sites in the State of Mexico Mesoamerican sites Aztec sites Former populated places in Mexico Otomi sites Lake islands of Mexico Altepetl Nextlalpan