My Mesoamerican Story

Nytica Artiaga
April 12, 2011
History/UCLA
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My Mesoamerican Story

My name is Nyla. I am a ruler in the Aztec empire. I am going to tell you all about my life before there was even an empire. It started off with my men and I. My father had died along the way and because of that I had more power than anyone. We have been walking for days. Some would call us nomads because we did not stay in one place for long because we had to keep moving along in our journey to find a place of our own. My father had a dream of the place that we would built our city. His dream was that we would build our city were an eagle was on top of a cactus with a snake in its talons. We traveled for days until we came upon this place were we saw water. All of us were so exhausted that we had to stop. In the meantime during our break we saw it. My fathers dream. Exactly, an eagle with a snake in its talons. And that was the start of our city.
We went on to name the capitol city Tenochtitlan because that was my fathers name. In memory of him when I called upon the city I would be calling his name. We began to build the city right there in the middle of that huge lake. This was a good thing because we had a good way to get water. As years went on we developed a strong central government and our city grew greatly. With me in power we had a great system going on.
Today with me in power is awsome because our city is strong. We have been lasting for hundreds of years now with a fair amount of problems but all in all we are setting up a great future for the rest of the world in years coming. Some things that we had did in our time as a city is we created Chinapas ( floating gardens). Also we made a way to record all of our stories and important documents so they would not be forgotten or lost. We also have edcation for all of our people so that we can all know and learn things that will prepare us for life as an adult. We also made different foods. One type of food was popcorn. It is basically corn kernels that have been heated up and popped open. Those are someof the things that as a city we accomplished.

My Mesoamerican Story

Mayan social Pyramid

M Life in the Mayan Empire

    Yesterday I was walking home from my friends house in the other country. While walking home I heard people coming from up behind me. The men then grabbed me and took me to the place where they hold all of the slaves. When we got there they told me that I was here because I had not paid my taxes in 5 days. In the Mayan society if you did not pay your taxes you were put into slavery.
     The next day I was put to work. I was ordered to my new master. his name was Luis Marshal. He began to talk to me about how it works to be a slave with him. He said that I would have it easy because i was with him. He was one of the top dogs. The only way that he would make it easier for me is if I obeyed orders and did my work. He also told me that I was lucky that I was not born into slavery because then i would never know what it was like to be free because he doesn't let none of his slaves go. He also told me that because I was once a noble that he could use me for a lot of things. Being that only nobles and priests knew how to read he made my life much easier. For the rest of my life I would be a slave.

The Fall of the Inca Empire

The Inca empire expanded in a way similar that the Aztecs did. they would have one of their people to go into the place that they wanted to conquer and would tell the people what they had to do and in what time they had to bring their tribe. The tribe knew that if they refused that the two would go into war and the Incas would win. When the new tribe became apart of the Incas they had to follow all of their religious practices and traditions. Sometimes if the tribe that the Incas wanted to conquer refused, the Incas would then cut off the head of their local leader until they cooperated.
In the 1530s the Incas thought that they ruled the world. But the plague of the smallpox came from up north and began killing a lot of Inca people. Soon after a man named Fransisco Pizarro came to the empire with 160 of his men. The Incas underestimated him and did not think of him as a threat.Actually he was friends with Cortes and was fighting against people in mesoanerica. One day Pizarro invited the Inca ruler to a meeting.He left all of his army behind only bringing 5000 body guards with no weapons. when Pizarro asked/told the Inca ruler to give up his Gods, he laughed in Pizarro's face. Because of this the Inca ruler was captured. the Inca ruler tried to buy his freedom, but when he paid Pizarro he still held him captive.While there he was accused of many crimes like believing in false gods and having too many wives.

My Mesoamerica Map