Aztec (Mexica)

The Aztec (or Mexica as they called themselves) were a small and obscure tribe when they settled in the Valley of Mexico and founded their capital, Tenochtitlan, in 1345. At the beginning of the sixteenth century Tenochtitlan (now Mexico City) was one of the largest cities in the world and the Mexica empire stretched from the Atlantic to the Pacific and into Guatemala and Nicaragua. Hernán Cortés