Ahuitzotl

Few rulers of Tenochtitlan extended its tributary reach as far as Ahuitzotl, the eighth tlatoani, who reigned from 1486 to 1502. The youngest of three brothers who held the throne in succession — sons of Tezozomoc, himself a son of Itzcoatl, and of Atotoztli, daughter of Moctezuma I — he was elected after the short and militarily undistinguished reign of his brother Tizoc. His other brother, Axayacatl, had ruled before that, and his nephew Moctezuma II would rule after him, placing Ahuitzotl at the center of the tightly interwoven royal kindred descended from Acamapichtli.

The new ruler opened his reign with campaigns to restore Mexica military prestige, and in 1487 he presided over the dedication of the rebuilt Great Temple of Tenochtitlan. The chronicles describe sacrifices on an enormous scale at the ceremony; the figures they give vary widely and are generally regarded as inflated, but the event was clearly intended as a demonstration of imperial power before invited rulers from across Mesoamerica.

Ahuitzotl's armies then carried Mexica arms farther than any predecessor's. Campaigns subdued rebellious Huastec towns, pressed into Oaxaca and the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, and secured Soconusco on the Pacific coast near the present Guatemalan border, the most distant tributary province the empire ever held. Garrisons and trading colonies followed the conquests, and the long-distance merchants known as pochteca operated under his protection as far as Xoconochco and beyond. Within the capital he sponsored major construction, and his name glyph appears on surviving monuments.

His final years were marked by disaster at home. Seeking a new water supply, he ordered the spring of Acuecuexatl near Coyoacan channeled into the city over local objections; the resulting works contributed to a severe flood of Tenochtitlan around 1499. A tradition reported in several chronicles connects his death in 1502 to a head injury suffered during the flooding, though the accounts differ. The electors then chose his nephew Moctezuma II, son of Axayacatl, while Ahuitzotl's own son Cuauhtemoc would become the last independent tlatoani in 1520. The conventional dates of his life, about 1451 to 1502, like all pre-conquest Mexica chronology, derive from colonial-era sources and are approximate.