The Aztecs Return to the Promised Land

The Mexica (Aztecs) came from the north to re-settle in
their ancestral home, which they called the promised land.

Around 1200 AD, a group of people arrived in the Valley of Mexico from the north.

They called themselves the Mexica, but 19th century historians would later call them the Aztec. The land in the north they called home went by the name of Aztlan (meaning "White Land"). Hence the name, Aztec.

They had left their home, yearning to return to their homeland, a place in the south they called the "promised land."

It had been many generations since they had left their homeland somewhere in the south and they didn't know exactly where it was.

However, their shaman foretold they would know they have arrived in the promised land when they saw a certain sign. That sign was an eagle sitting on a cactus with a snake in its beak.

The Seal of Mexico, found on the flag.

So they left their home in Aztlan, and headed south. Their northern home could have possibly been in the Southwest United States (Hohokam area in Arizona) or the Midwest United States (Mississippian site of Aztalan in Wisconsin). Both of these civilizations declined around the same time the Mexica people showed up in Mexico.

I favor the Hohokam connection because their language is related. And both they and the Mexica were experts in the practice of irrigation using extensive canals. Also, the presence of arts and crafts in Hohokam villages originating from the Teuchitlan people of western Mexico shows there was established trade and communication between these two areas. This would help a people gather the courage to uproot themselves and migrate due to their destination being less of a mystery.

When they arrived in the Valley of Mexico,  they saw their omen on the island in the middle of Lake Texcoco,  where they would eventually build their city Tenochtitlan, which in their language means "Among the Stone-Prickly Pear Cactus Fruit."

When they arrived, they were tired, weak and hungry and in no position to conquer the fierce Toltecs, who controlled the land.

They petitioned the king of the Toltecs if they could settle where they had seen the foretold sign.

Quetzalcoatl, the feathered serpent god.

The Toltec king was in the middle of a difficult war with another group of people and his resources where spread thin. He could tell they were, at heart, a noble and strong people.

He knew if he denied them a place to settle they would attempt to take land by force and he couldn't afford the distraction. But the Mexico valley was too strategic of a place to allow them to settle there. He told them that the lake and the island was a sacred spot for the Toltecs and they couldn't settle there.

However, he did grant them land to settle. It was further south. And it was inhabited with poison snakes. His hope was that they would be stricken by the serpents and get more weakened, so that when he was in a position to fight them, it would be an easy war.

A couple of years later, he sent his people to check on them and, to their dismay, they were thriving. The presence of the snakes was a godsend to them. They simply killed and ate the snakes for survival. The snakes ended up being like manna to them.

Eventually, the Mexica conquered all the neighboring people and where in control of a huge empire when the Spaniards arrived.

How does this tie in to the Book of Mormon?

Their desire to return to their ancestral home could be because they were the descendants of the Nephite people who had migrated north in 55 BC to escape being surrounded by and tormented by the numerous Lamanites at the time. They kept the memory alive of where they had come from for many, many generations.

Tenochtitlan at its zenith.

Alma 63:4 And it came to pass that in the thirty and seventh year of the reign of the judges, there was a large company of men, even to the amount of five thousand and four hundred men, with their wives and their children, departed out of the land of Zarahemla into the land which was northward.

Another correlation is that the area with the serpents that the Mexicas settled is geographically in the same area (land Northward, near the narrow neck) where the poisonous serpents lived in the Book of Ether.

Ether 9:31 And there came forth poisonous serpents also upon the face of the land, and did poison many people. And it came to pass that their flocks began to flee before the poisonous serpents, towards the land southward, which was called by the Nephites Zarahemla.

The Book of Ether is clear that the snakes were eradicated during the time of Lib. However, if it was conducive to an infestation of poisonous serpents at one time, it could very well have happened again.




Sources:
Mexica
Aztecs HISTORY.COM