Aztecs leave Aztlan

1168

According to later Nahua migration accounts, this was the approximate year the tribe the Mexica would eventually call the Aztecs left their mythic northern homeland of Aztlan and began the long wandering that would eventually end at an eagle on a cactus in a Valley of Mexico lake. The journey, lasting over a century by their reckoning, took them through desert and mountain before they arrived as despised refugees in a valley already crowded with city-states.