Nezahualcoyotl (c. 1402–1472)

Nezahualcoyotl (b. ca. 1402; d. 1472), ruler of Texcoco, Mexico (1431–1472). Nezahualcoyotl ("Fasting Coyote") ruled the Nahuatl-speaking Acolhua polity centered at Texcoco, on the eastern shore of the Valley of Mexico lake system. Though he is one of the most renowned pre-Conquest Mexican rulers, part of his fame undoubtedly results from post-Conquest revision. According to native histories, Nezahualcoyotl witnessed the assassination of his father, Ixtlilxochitl, in 1418, during a conflict between the Acolhuas and their Tepanec overlords. He fled to his mother's people, the Mexica royal dynasty at Tenochtitlán. In 1428 he became a key player in the alliance of Mexicas, Acolhuas, and rebellious Tepanecs that defeated the Tepanec ruler Maxtla. Installed by the Mexica in his father's place and with a Mexica princess as his principal wife, Nezahualcoyotl remained a junior partner in the Aztec Empire. He became a wise judge and lawgiver, a master builder, a poet, and a philosopher, while fathering over one hundred children by his forty wives. Claims that he was a monotheist and that he composed several Nahuatl songs recorded in the sixteenth century are probably unfounded. He was succeeded by his seven-year-old son, Nezahualpilli; his line continued into the colonial period and included the historian Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxochitl (1578–1650).

See alsoAztecs; Nezahualpilli.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Alva Ixtlilxochitl, Fernando De, Obras históricas, edited by Edmundo O'Gorman (1975).

Nigel Davies, The Aztecs: A History (1980).

Jerome A. Offner, Law and Politics in Aztec Texcoco (1983).

Diego Durán, The Aztecs: The History of the Indies of New Spain, translated by Doris Heyden and Fernando Horcasitas (1964).

Additional Bibliography

Elizondo, Carlos. Nezahualcóyotl. México, D.F.: Planeta, 2005.

                                     Louise M. Burkhart