![[Pasted image 20250201164408.png]] According to legend, generations before the Spanish arrived, a warlike people called the [[Aztec]] (also known as the Mexica) had left a city called [Aztlán](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aztl%C3%A1n) and traveled south to the site of present-day Mexico City. In 1325, they began construction of Tenochtitlán on an island in [Lake Texcoco](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Texcoco). By 1519, when Cortés arrived, the capital was connected to the mainland by several causeways. One of Cortés’s soldiers, Bernal Díaz del Castillo, recorded his impressions upon first seeing it: “When we saw so many cities and villages built in the water and other great towns on dry land we were amazed and said it was like the enchantments . . . on account of the great towers and buildings rising from the water, and all built of masonry. And some of our soldiers even asked whether the things that we saw were not a dream? . . . I do not know how to describe it, seeing things as we did that had never been heard of or seen before, not even dreamed about.” ![[Pasted image 20250201164505.png]] --- Next: [[1.10 Chinampas]] Back: [[1.8 Hernán Cortés]]