Tenochtitlan

The year 2 House

Later Indigenous annals and the Codex Mendoza associate the Mexica foundation of Tenochtitlan with the year 2 House, conventionally correlated to 1325. No contemporary record supplies a month or a day.

INAH notes that the documentary traditions give foundation years ranging from 1325 to 1375. UNAM researchers stress that founding a city was a process rather than a single overnight act — one suggests the date may record an official foundation protocol enacted after people were already living on the site.

Tenants of Azcapotzalco

What the Mexica established was a small settlement on an islet in the Lake Texcoco basin, not the later imperial metropolis in miniature. The land was under Tepanec control.

The ruler of Azcapotzalco permitted them to settle in return for tribute and participation in military campaigns. The settlement began under Tepanec suzerainty, not as the capital of an already existing empire.

Once established, the Mexica organised four initial quarters — Moyotlan, Teopan, Atzacoalco and Cuepopan — around a sacred centre.

The eagle and the cactus were a symbol, not a sighting

Later Mexica accounts presented the patron deity Huitzilopochtli as guiding the migration, and the eagle-and-cactus image worked as a political and sacred foundation emblem. Eduardo Matos Moctezuma reads the scene symbolically, and the serpent was a later addition to the tradition.

Tradition associates a leader named Tenoch with the founding community, but the consulted evidence does not securely establish that a historically documented Tenoch led a datable foundation ceremony.

Every narrative source for the founding — the Codex Mendoza, the Codex Boturini, the Codex Aubin, the Crónica Mexicáyotl — was written later than the event it describes.