The Valley of Mexico has drawn people from Mesoamerica attracted by its abundant sources of water, easy communication, and plentiful game and vegetation, throughout its long history of human habitation.

The valley is a corridor through which many migrating groups pass and sometimes settle.

During the pre-Columbian era, the valley is in constant turmoil except when central authority and political hegemony exist.

The last nomadic arrivals in the valley are the Mexica, more commonly known as the Aztec.

Although recent linguistic and archaeological work suggests the Aztec may have come from northwest Mexico, their origins are obscure.

According to legend, the Aztec came from Aztlan, a mythical place to the north of the Valley of Mexico around 1100.

They are said to have made their way to the valley guided by the chirps of their sun and war god Huitzilopichtli (meaning "hummingbird on the left").

The inhabitants of the valley view the new arrivals with suspicion and try to prevent their settlement.

...the Valley of Mexico in or about 1168 or 1179.

The Aztec, after much wandering and a few wars, in the early 1300s, reach the marshy islands in Lago de Texcoco (site of present-day Mexico City), where they see an eagle perching on a cactus tree and holding a snake in its beak (an image reproduced on the modern Mexican flag).

According to Aztec legend, this is a sign indicating where they should build their new capital city.

Tenochtitlan is eventually built on an island in Lago de Texcoco and gradually becomes an important center in the area.

Drinking water comes from Chapultepec hill on the mainland, and causeways connect the island to the shores of the lake.

The Aztec establish a monarchy in 1376, naming Acamapichtli as their first king.

The Mexica, continually dislodged by the small city-states that battle one another in shifting alliances, t finally find refuge on small muddy islands in the slowly shrinking Lake Texcoco in 1325 (or, according to some chronicles, 1345).

They establish a small collection of reed huts on the central island (at modern Mexico City), calling it Tenochtitlán and eventually connecting it to the mainland by causeways.

(The term Aztec is today a collective name applied to all the peoples linked by trade, custom, religion, and language to these Mexica founders.

An alternative date for the Mixtec’s founding of Tenochtitlán in the Valley of Mexico’s Lake Texcoco is 1345.

A second group of Aztec at Lake Texcoco settle the island of Tlatelolco, nearby the capital of Tenochtitlán, in 1358.

The first royal judicial body established in New Spain in 1527 is the audiencia of Mexico City.

The audiencia consists of four judges, who also hold executive and legislative powers.

The crown, however, is aware of the need to create a post that will carry the weight of royal authority beyond local allegiances.

Control of the bureaucracy is handed over in 1535 to Antonio de Mendoza, who is named the first viceroy of New Spain (1535-50).

His duties are extensive but exclude judicial matters entrusted to the audiencia.

The Spaniards' task after the fall of Tenochtitlan is to settle and expand the new domains on the mainland of North and Central America that become known as New Spain.

Cortes dispatches several expeditions to survey the areas beyond the Valley of Mexico and to establish political control over the land and its inhabitants.

Once released from the central political control of Tenochtitlan, most towns surrender to Cortes's men.

The capital of the new colony, as a symbol of political continuity, is to be built squarely atop the ruins of Tenochtitlan and is renamed Mexico after the Mexica tribe.

The conquest of the Aztec empire had required an enormous effort and a tremendous sacrifice by Cortes's army, and after their victory, the soldiers had demanded what they have come for: prestige and wealth.

The spoils from the city largely had been lost; Cortes has to resort to some other strategy to provide for his men.

The conquistador has already surveyed all Aztec records related to tributes and tributary towns, and on the basis of this information, he decides to distribute grants of people and land among his men.

This practice has already been tried in the Caribbean, and Cortes himself had received encomiendas, grants of land and people, in Hispaniola in 1509 and in Cuba in 1511.

Granting encomiendas become an institutions throughout New Spain to ensure subordination of the conquered pop-ulations and the use of their labor by the Spanish colonizers, as well as a means to reward Spanish subjects for services rendered to the crown.

Aztec domination reaches into most of central and southern Mexico by the early sixteenth century (with the exception of the Mayan areas in the southeast).

Before the settlement at Tenochtitlan, Aztec society was quite simple in its organization and was composed of peasants, warriors, and priest-rulers.

Afterward, and with a much larger population, there is an increasing division of labor and a more complex social structure.

The emperor is selected according to merit from among the ruling dynasty.

The nobility is composed of the high priests, the military, and political leaders.

The merchant class lives apart in the city and has its own courts, guilds, and gods.

Commoners, the largest segment of society, are farmers, artisans, and lower-level civil servants.

The lowest rung of society is composed of conquered peoples brought to Tenochtitlan as slaves.

The political structure of the Aztec empire is based on a loose coalition of city-states under the fiscal control of Tenochtitlan.

The main objective of Aztec expansion is to exact tribute from conquered peoples.

Tributes are in kind: cocoa, cotton, corn, feathers, precious metals and stones, shells, and jaguar skins are among those sent.

The towns also have the obligation to provide soldiers and slaves and to recognize Aztec supremacy and the supremacy of the Aztec god Huitzilopichtli.

Otherwise, towns are basically free to conduct their internal affairs, and Aztec hegemony is never fully consolidated—a fact that will eventually become a major element in the fall of the empire.