Aztec and City of Tenochtitlan. With the Aztecs, archaeology merges fully with history. The picture and rebus writing of the Aztec manuscripts and the accounts of Bernal Diaz del Castillo and Bernardino Sahagun are sources as important as the monuments of Tenochtitlan which lie beneath the streets of modern Mexico City.
The Aztecs were among the last of the wild Chichimecs to enter the valley of Mexico after the fall of Tula. For a time the Aztecs were vassals to some of the more civilized city states of the valley, such as Colhuacan, and by the middle of the fourteenth century the Aztecs had taken up residence on small islands in the marshy lake of Texcoco. The Aztecs allied themselves with the Tepanecs, who rule Azcapotzalco, but later turned on their allies and subjugated them in 1428.
