Is anything known about how aware the Aztecs were of the peoples in North America, or vice versa?
It seems it might be hard to escape noticing that a big, literate culture lives next door, but maybe the Sonoran and Chihuahuan Deserts were big enough obstacles to such contact. And maybe the Aztecs weren’t of an imperialistic mind and didn’t care what was beyond the desert?
But then, it seems there are similarities (to my untrained eye, anyway) between Mesoamericans and some of the tribes of the American Southwest–a vaguely similar artistic sense, sophisticated calendars (which I’m assuming the Plains Indians didn’t have).
So anyway: is there any reason to believe that in, say, 1200 AD the aboriginal people of Texas knew about the big civilization(s) in what is now central Mexico?
The only good reason to cross territories that may be hostile is trade. Any evidence of trade, caravans, etc? Of course, a lack of beasts of burden (other than women) would severely limit caravan-type trade. Were there any valuable items to trade? (Tin and bronze, for example, were common trade goods in Europe and the mediterranean at about the same development point.) They also lacked money equivalents, it seems, so there was no convenient medium of exchange to simplify trade.
Unless there’s a need to go exploring for or obtain rare goods, why would finding out about anything other than your immediate neighbours be necessary?
There’s evidence of trade across large regions of North America, with goods ending up tousands of miles from where they were produced. The pyramids of Cahokia, although built of earth rather than stone, seem to imply a knowledge of monumental architecture elsewhere.
It’s not relevant as evidence (and I suspect it’s history is grossly inaccurate today – I haven’t seen it in ages), but the 1963 movie Kings of the Sun is about such intra-American contacts:
The Aztecs themselves allegedly believed that their ancestors were Chichimecs from the SW of the present-day US.
However, they contrasted themselves at the height of their power with the Chichimecs, whom they considered barbarians.
My impression is that it’s pretty well-established that turquoise was traded between the American Southwest and the Mesoamerican civilizations, so at the very least there was a chain of intermediaries stretching between the two areas (i.e., the Mayans knew some guys over the mountains who knew some guys across the river who knew some guys across some other mountains who knew the Anasazi, or something like that.)
There is substantial evidence of trade between the pueblo peoples of the four corners region and the cultures further south. One common trade item was tropical bird feathers, and in Chaco Canyon, actual live macaws.
I’ve heard that the language of the Mandans (in what is now South Dakota) is related to the language of the Aztecs. I’m not sure how reliable that is, though.
All very interesting, thank you. The point about the lack of pack animals is well-taken, and I suspect to be another major factor (besides the deserts).
As for the question, “why would finding out about anything other than your immediate neighbours be necessary?”
I just try to imagine myself as a Plains Indian, having heard that there are people far to the South who live in a huge city with buildings (what’s a building? like a big stone tipi or something, I guess) and countless other people, who can fashion all these fancy things out of stone and whatever else. I’d be so curious, I might be tempted to gather a few other guys together and scout it out. It would seem so unreal I’d want to check it out.
Uto-Aztecan Languages. The Mandan, FWIW, are Siouan; the Creek Muskogean.
Mesoamerican cultures had a pretty extensive trading network. Some, probably including the Aztecs, traded along the coast as far south as Panama. A now-extinct group in western Caribbean Panama supposedly spoke an Aztecan language.
What he said.
The Nahua people, in the San Salvador area of El Salvador, are the descendants of Aztecs who moved there from Mexico centuries ago. They still speak a form of the Nahuatl language like back in Mexico.
North American people at Pueblo Bonito in Chaco Canyon have been found to drink cocoa about the time you’re talking about.
I have read elsewhere that cacao beans were used as currency in the absence of standard metal coins, in South America, and that this is believed by a few archaeologists to have reached as far as some parts of the Northern American continent. Not sure how universal/accepted the NA theory is.
Were any of the pre-Columbians coastal seafaring traders, like the Greeks and the Phoenicians in the Mediterranean? And if not, how come that type of culture never evolved?
Update: It seems, very accepted. Arizona has also yielded extensive evidence of cacao trade.
What’s interesting is that there was more evidence of cocoa drinking in the households of ordinary people. They just couldn’t get enough! And it is believed turquoise was the exchange item of choice, for those delicious beans…
Yes. For example, the Mayan city of Tulum on the Yucatan peninsula was a major trading port.
There was some coastal trade at least along the Atlantic coast of Middle America. As I mentioned, Mesoamericans traded south at least as far as Panama. On his fourth voyage, Columbus encountered a large trading canoe filled with goods off the coast of Honduras. If he had gone in the direction it was headed, he probably would have found the Mayans and Aztecs. Instead he headed south, because that’s where he thought he would find the Straits of Malacca.
The Incas used balsa wood rafts with sails, of the kind made famous by Thor Heyerdahl’s Kon-Tiki, off the Pacific coast of South America.
Actually newest thinking is that the mound builders of North America preceded the Mayans and the monumental architecture elsewhere.
My understanding from Chicano studies years ago was that the Mexica, who eventually became the dominant people of the Aztec Empire came from a region in the Northwest known as the place of Herons-Aztlan.
Some weather thing or clan disagreement caused the migration southward around A.D. 1111.
So it seems the Aztecs had some history along the way, staying in different places, maybe even for generations, but still driven on to find their new homeland ( which would be signified by the sign of an eagle perched atop a cactus which was growing out of a rock . The eagle would be holding a snake in his mouth).
They found this sign at Tenochtitlan and prospered there, but they were warrriors and militaristic expansion followed, with alot of conquering of adjacent areas. So I imagine that alot of the once independent states were not cool with the Aztecs and tributes like taxes were imposed. So maybe when people thought of the great empire they also felt fear of it, or wished they could avoid it, or wanted to destroy it. And, of course the Spanish came along and helped them to just that.