Indigenous Societies in the Pre-Columbian Era: Aztecs & Iroquois Essay

Aztecs were Mesoamerican indigenous people who spoke the Nahuatl language and lived in the territory of modern Mexico. Throughout the 14^th and 15^th centuries, they created a sophisticated urbanized culture of city-states and came to dominate significant parts of Mexico, forming what is sometimes called an Aztec empire. Aztecs were a relatively militant people and often engaged the neighboring indigenous societies in raids and all-out wars to obtain loot and prisoners (Townsend, 2019). Politically speaking, the Aztec Empire was not particularly centralized because it did not have expansive bureaucracy, but the ruler of Tenochtitlan, as the most militarily powerful city-state, still came to dominate the politics (Townsend, 2019). Aztec religion revolved around the solar cycle and involved human sacrifices, although European sources tended to exaggerate the scope thereof (Townsend, 2019). Overall, the Aztecs formed a militaristic society that created well-developed city-states and was moving toward a centralized monarchy when the Europeans arrived.

In contrast, the Iroquois people comprised a league of five indigenous tribes – namely, Mohawk, Seneca, Cayuga, Oneida, and Onondaga – who lived in the Great Lakes region in North America. Unlike the Aztecs, who created urban centers, the Iroquois lived in largely autonomous agricultural communities (Birch & Hart, 2018). They were famously communal, living in the longhouses that accommodated multiple families each. Archeological evidence of such longhouses goes back to the 13^th century at least (Birch & Hart, 2018). While the Iroquois had their fair share of conflicts with neighbors, they were not as militant as the Aztecs. It was probably because the less-developed economy of the Great Lakes region offered fewer opportunities for obtaining valuable loot, and the prisoners were not as valuable because the Iroquois religion did not require human sacrifices. In political terms, the tribes and individual villages were relatively autonomous (Birch & Hart, 2018). Thus, unlike the Aztecs, the Iroquois were not yet an urban society and did not begin to form a fully functional centralized state.

References

Birch, J., & Hart, J. P. (2019). Social networks and northern Iroquoian confederacy dynamics. American Antiquity 83(1), 2018, 13–33. Web.

Townsend, C. (2019). Fifth sun: A new history of the Aztecs. Oxford UP.