Nahua

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Indian population of Mexico and Central America, of whom the Aztec are the best known.

Modern-day Nahua are agricultural, practicing shifting cultivation and working both common and private land. They are skilled weavers, using fibres of the maguey plant, wool, and cotton. Nahua parents and godparents have strong ties in a fictive kin relationship. Though they profess Roman Catholicism, the Nahua believe in witchcraft and recognize a variety of supernatural beings. See also Nahuatl language.

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Aztec: Tenochtitlan and the Aztec empire

More on "Nahua" from Britannica Concise:

Tonatiuh - Sun deity of the Aztecs and Nahuas.

Tabasco - State (pop., 2000: 1,891,829), southeastern Mexico.

Tlaxcala - Town (pop., 2000: 73,213), capital of Tlaxcala state, Mexico.

Nahuatl language - Uto-Aztecan language of Mexico, which continues to be spoken by more than a million modern Mexicans in various markedly divergent dialects.

Mesoamerican civilization - Complex of aboriginal cultures that developed in parts of Mexico and Central America before the Spanish conquest in the 16th century.

More on "Nahua" from the 32 Volume Encyclopædia Britannica:

Nahua - Middle American Indian population of central Mexico, of which the Aztecs (see Aztec) of pre-Conquest Mexico are probably the best known members. The language of the Aztecs, Nahua, is spoken by all the Nahua peoples in a variety of dialects.

Nahua language - an American Indian language of the Uto-Aztecan family, spoken in central and western Mexico. Nahua, the most important of the Uto-Aztecan languages, was the language of the Aztec and Toltec civilizations of Mexico. A large body of literature in Nahua, produced by the Aztecs, survives from the 16th century, recorded in an orthography that was introduced by Spanish priests and based on that of ...

Nahuan languages - subgroup of the Uto-Aztecan languages, including Pochutec, Nahua, and Pipil; they are sometimes considered a subfamily coordinate with Shoshonean and Sonoran, and sometimes included in the Sonoran subfamily. The languages are spoken throughout southern Mexico and Central America.

Tonatiuh - in Meso-American religion, Nahua sun deity of the fifth and final era (the Fifth Sun). In most myths of the Meso-American Nahua peoples, including those of the Aztecs, four eras preceded the era of Tonatiuh, each ended by cataclysmic destruction. Tonatiuh, or Ollin Tonatiuh, was associated with the eagle (at sunrise and sunset) and, in Aztec versions, with the deity Huitzilopochtli.

Latin America, history of - Although the majority of the indigenous population continued to live in their traditional units across the countryside, their lives were nonetheless profoundly affected by the conquest and its aftermath. The most obvious development was drastic demographic loss; in a process marked by periodic large epidemics, the population declined through the 16th century and on into the 17th century to a ...

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