Spanish Conquest of The Aztec Empire
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- Опубликовано: 2 июл 2024
- Also known as the Conquest of Mexico, these wars fostered in the Spanish colonization of the Americas.
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Imagine seeing the floating city of Tenochtitlan for the first time, when entering the valley of Mexico through mountain and volcano passes.
I've heard that one or more Spaniards later wrote that they had wondered if they were all dreaming when they first saw Tenochtitlan. It was incredibly clean and beautiful and neatly laid out. Also, it must have been such a relief to see it at last because the Spaniards had taken weeks to get there, making them very uncomfortable, dirty and tired. Plus, they expected to find huge amounts of gold there.
@@fishofgold6553spaniards were WHITE PEOPLES. Always remember that.
It must’ve been so beautiful‼️‼️
Fun fact. Even though history now knows them as the Aztecs, the people living in Tenochtitlan called themselves the Mexica, which is where the modern day name for Mexico comes from. In fact Aztec legends tells of how their capital of Tenochtitlan was built on the site where a eagle had a snake in its mouth perched on top of a cactus. This image has been engraved onto the flag of Mexico, and the Mexican people still see themselves as the scions of the Aztec's legacy. Quite ironic since the Aztecs were considered the evil overlords of the region who were so brutal and oppressive that both their vassals and enemies joined forces in helping the Spanish in putting an end to their civilization.
True
@Josman thank you, I've known the fact that it compromised of 3 different peoples but can never remember the individual names lol
Yep,.
Well put! It's common knowledge to most Mexican people but likely something not a lot of others might know. It is also known that the Mexica were also once invaders like the Spanish; their origins believed to be from the North, according to Aztec mythology. If I remember correctly, I read once there were also linguistic origin similarities to tribes of southern USA/north Mexico.
@@v.Toro. Well, if we go from Aztec Legends, they get their name from Aztalan or Aztlan, essentially their promised land. The land of White Swan is interpreted as a Land of Snow. So judging by name and description of its trees, the Aztecs are from what is now the State of Wisconsin and it’s the only place with “Aztalan National Park” meaning their original homeland is in Wisconsin.
They followed the Mississippi and then eventually the Colorado River down to what is now New Mexico, (where they likely had adopted the name Mexica, which I think just meant Nomads but I could be mistaken) before making their way down the mountain range to what is now Mexico City.
I've been really enjoying this newest addition to the Simonverse. Thanks Simon and Co.
Proposing an edit - Whistleverse 🤣
@@DomoKuchikan I like it lol
agree. this is quickly becoming my favorite channel in the simonverse. :)
The Simonverse will eventually start having plot holes and have major continuity errors
Tenochtitlan is definitely on my time travel bucket list. Imagine being the first Spanish man to see the city. It must’ve been a marvel to behold.
The Spanish had A LOT of help conquering the Aztecs to be fair. Other native tribes allied with them.
Yes , many natives rised against the Aztecs .
Yeah fed up with being chopped up on top of temples.
Only reason why they were able conquered them tbh
They traded their old overlords for new ones, though Cortes did try to smooth things over to an extent. He even took a few high-ranking Natives on further expeditions.
@@pyromania1018 like Philippines, where Tlaxcala warriors fought against Japanese pirates/ronin
Could you do the Munster Rebellion? Its an insane story that hasnt really been talked about. Its like waco if they had taken over a whole city and had an army. Please! It would be so cool.
I second this! I'd never heard of this before but after giving the events a skim, I am beyond interested in learning more about it.
If you haven’t already, cheating out Dan Carlins Hardcore History episode regarding it. It is called “Prophets of Doom” if I remember correctly and it is as perfect as the rest of the series.
I heard of the Munster rebellion. Herman and Grandpa drank one of Grandpa's crazy potions and took over Mexico before Lily found out and made them come back home to California
@@mistacarva: Read the Pursuit of the Millennium by Norman Cohn. It's got a brilliant chapter on the Munster Rebellion. If you can understand German, I recommend the German TV miniseries Der Konig Der Letzten Tage, starring a young Christophe Walz as Jan Van Leyden. Amazing show!
Cheers and best wishes!
@@mistacarva yes. Best description of that conflict and everything leading up to it. Of course anything Dan Carlin does is great.
This has become my favourite of Simon's channels!
Everything you do is pure art, love all your channels, plz keep being awesome...
Great video man. Channel is off to a solid start.
Simon, great addition to your library of channels and by far i hope to be my favorite. I do have to admit I do scan your library's for videos over 40 min long and gravitate to those.
Great video as always! Great content! Can you do a video on the Spanish Civil War? Cheers,
YEEESSS!! One of my favorite historical episodes
Great job covering this one Simon! I wonder if you could please cover some WWI battles in the future:
The Battle Of Verdun
The Battle Of The Somme
The Meuse-Argonne Offensive(perhaps a mention of the famous Lost Battalion if you can?)
Thanks, and keep up the amazing work!
The Lost Battalion is one of the most intriguing stories of World War I
Lost battalion would make a great decoding the unknown video
@@thorpeaaron1110 agreed. They and The Harlem Hellfighters need to have their stories told and retold.
I second this
@@mitchellneu Yeah
I just came back from Mexico City there’s some much history. If you are Mexican or love history this is a place I recommend everyone to go. You won’t be disappointed. The church is still on top of the remains of the Aztec Temple. It’s in front of El Zocalo it’s called Catedral Metropolitana.
El Palacio presidencial está encima de que fue el palacio de Montezuma.
It’s a turd of a city. Gross.
It’s worth noting that Guerrero (considered the father of the Mestizos because his may’ve been the first interracial marriage in the Americas) taught the Mayans things like Phalanxes and they used them against the Spaniards when the latter moved south into Mayan lands. Guerrero even died in battle against the Spanish, leading Mayans.
Oh that's interesting. Such an ancient tactic and still effective enough to be used in the 1500s
@@andyyang3029 Weapons may change, but people are fairly apprehensive to the prospect of running into a wall of spears.
@@andyyang3029 The formation was the Pike and Shot (Tercio in spanish). The formation was starting to make a return around that time. From models I have seen its a square of pikes with Crossbow (Later gun power weapons) on its sides.
@Atanacio Maria Kateri doubt the light infantry formation would be as effective against armor plated Spaniards.
Source?
Tell us you don’t know jack about history without telling us….
The FIRST known interracial relationship in the America’s was Cortez and la Malinche. They lived 200 years before Guerrero.
All that bs about phalanx is also a made up story.
Great video. Had no idea it was so complex, or so brutal 😬
That's war for you.
How has no one made an epic movie about this story!?!
A novel, Captain from Castile, is set in the Cortes conquest. The movie couldn't show the epic scope of the campaign, unfortunately.
@JG-MV it’s pretty awesome…but pure historic fiction. But…yeah…it’s awesome.
Mexico City isn't just one of the largest cities in the Western Hemisphere, it's one of the largest in the entire world.
Ok
Ok
Ok
Ok
most populous in north america as well
Thank you Simon
1:20 - Chapter 1 - Arrival of cortés tabasco
6:55 - Chapter 2 - No turning back
9:35 - Chapter 3 - The heart of the aztec empire
16:35 - Chapter 4 - The beginning of the end
21:30 - Chapter 5 - The siege of tenochtitlan
25:15 - Chapter 6 - A new era
Learning this for A Level early history. Thank god this video exists
Have to ask again for a video on the war of Spanish succession or the battle of Blenheim. Would be hella awesome man!
A very excellent video 📹
Well balanced
Watched it twice.
Honestly, the conquest of the Aztecs is nothing to the conquest of the Incas by Pizzaro, who had far fewer soldiers than Cortez, little to no allies, and facing a foe that was in every way the superior of the Aztecs.
I wouldn’t call them superior. They were basically proto-Communists.
European diseases reached them first. That's why Pizarro won so easily.
@@AtaMarKat that's a good thing.
I mean, there was a massive civil war and both sides annihilated each other while Pizarro just sat and watch while eating popcorn.
@@thebiologist8662 The civil war you are talking about ended right before Pizarro arrived. As we know, Pizarro captured the Incan emperor just as the emperor was en route for his return to Cuzco after he defeated his rebellious brother.
Thanks
Man these videos never fail to amaze me and blow my mind 😂
I swear I'm so happy I found Simon's channel because it showed me he had 10 more channels going over everything you can imagine. Round of applause for Simon and his team, I know someone, I think named Will, writes the scripts for these videos so he does all the research and information gathering that's needed in order to do a video like this one... so hats off to the whole team over there at Wargraphics and the other channels 💪💪💯💯
Hi! I wrote the script for this episode, thanks for the kind words :)
@@jbagga3 how much do you charge to write a script? I’m interested!
To burn ones ships is usually associated with a Viking funeral but the term to burn your ships actually comes from Cortez’s first action in Mexico. Upon hearing his men say that if they fail they could sail home he threw a massive party and order his men to burn the ships. The idea was that if they want to go home it would be on the Aztec ships, two years later they conquered paradise
Vikings also didn't burn their ships. They did occasionally bury the ship with the leader, though, which is pretty damn impressive.
Cortés no mandó quemar las naves, mandó "dar las naves al través". Es decir, quitarles los aparejos y los mástiles dejándolas de costado. Es más, con esas naves se consyruyeron algunos de los bergantines que se usaron en la conquista de Tenochtitlan.
For those of us who go down Wikipedia rabbit holes; you make the best videos
Very interesting stuff.
I didn't realize where all these hot sauce names came from. Thanks for the excellent video.
thank you for that. a lot of information i took from this video.
You should talk about Julius Caesar conquest in Gaul.
Already done, except for one village surrounded by squalid Roman camps.
@@duncancurtis1758 He did a bio of Caesar, but I don't think he did a video on the war.
Do a video on the Trail of Tears and the Seminole Wars
My family, on my fathers side, is descended from the remnants of the Aztec peoples, while my mothers side is descended from the Tlaxcala people. Yet I came out 6'2, light skinned and sprinkled with red hair. Genes be crazy.
A couple of conquistadors in the woodpile... The story of Mexico...
My father's side of the family are otomi and my mothers spanish.
when I tell people I'm almost full blooded irish w a speck of Norwegian nobody gets that it's from the vikings in the woodpile
@@celter.45acp98bro at the end of the day your comparing two groups of white people Mexicans genes are much more diverse
0:48 "When the Fire Nation attacked" 🔥
Around 14:20;
Many modern historians doubt everything they have ever been told, because this is how they were told to be: The once popular saying of "Question Everything!" comes to mind. While it is certainly helpful at times, this approach can become much more of a liability than an asset. I'm referring specifically to those who (attempt to) put modern values, their own personal feelings and thoughts, and various contemporary issues and concerns, into historical scenarios, forgetting that, just as they do, these historical people acted based upon their current cultures, beliefs, ideals, etc. This can and does often lead to incorrect, or unlikely, or, at best, improperly motivated actions being given as the currently accepted causes of historical events, when this simply is not the case.
The point, shortly put, is that we need to be careful about how and why we rewrite history, and on what bases we do it as well.
That cuts both ways, though. I’d say that we put much more emphasis on examining our own biases now, whereas in the past people were much more likely to base things on the values of their own time, which would have been no more applicable to what they were writing (and perhaps even less so) to today.
@Olaka "Guns, Germs and Steel", great book...
@Olaka "Eurosupremepizza"? Ok... What is this b10wurfer you speak of?
Man the Spanish conquests of the new world is really cool tragic but pretty cool the stories told about the expeditions and treasure hunts are pretty cool to read about.
I know right it's one of my favorite historical subjects to study
Truly epic tales.
We should see this story as one of the most incredible, of men like us, who were neither saints nor villains, the enterprises of men are not those of the gods, they are full of passions, arts, hatreds, virtues, blood, and sex. Any of us exposed to the most extreme situations would be totally different. I imagine myself with a rifle in some war and depending on the day I would be a hero or a demon!
This is the realm of Earth. Here we walk between knowledge and ignorance of good. Whoever is freaked out should fly to the kingdom of Air with the university communists and their fucking mother. Dont talk about "spaniards or mexicas" talk about individuals, protagonists like Marina(la malinche), Cortés and his generals and wives, who make the history of mankind, something impressive, full of threads and turning points.
History is never tragic my friend! For the future is uncertain and harbors mysteries of undecipherable luck
Just shows how advanced technology and the horse made a difference. The battle of Otumba would have been a loss for Cortez if it wasn't for his cavalry that was barely 20 men.
@williamalfonso1373 The sword played an enormous part in this battles also
Many coincidences you don’t wanna talk about on this channel many similarities physically as well i get it. great video as always
Warographics
Can you do a video on the Battle of the Denmark Strait?
If I could snap my fingers and travel through time and space, the battle for the Aztec capital would definitely make the shirt list.
I absolutely love this channel! I was wondering if you might, someday, cover the French and Indian War (The Seven Years War, to the rest of the world outside the Colonies)?
How about the Seven Days war? Or the Hundred Years war?
@@Chris-hx3om the 100 (116ish, actually) years war would either be the longest video ever or several shorter ones. Not a bad suggestion though.
@@chriskuzianik9507 Thanks. I'm fully aware that is wasn't 100 years. ;-)
@@Chris-hx3om wasn't trying to offend or insult. Just being my nerdy self on that, lol.
@@chriskuzianik9507 Not offended or insulted. It's all good... Nice to actually see comments from people with actual knowledge...
Can you do battle of Szigetzvar or Battle of Vukovar, that would be interesting
Please do the battle of Rorke's Drift
Bromhead!
Sir!
I've a job for you.
Someone please give Simon a Spanish and Nahuatl pronunciation guide!
hey, he tried!!
He did decent, until he got to Cuauhtémoc, unless he was using some kind of Nahuatl pronunciation I’ve never heard of before.
@@sd4mg 3:03 "Giyero" lol
Also Chinese and French!
Has anyone looked for cortez's ships I imagine that would be pretty high up on an archeologist list
Contrary to what Simon said, the ships weren't destroyed. They were dismantled for the raw materials. In the painting he showed, you can even see the rowboats full of planks, ropes, and sails.
@@thebiologist8662 Well that's kind of disappointing
there is a spanish series "Carlos Rey Emperador", about events happened at those times.
Fabulous.
Check out The Rest is History’s 8 part series on the Cortes expedition if you are interested in this period of history. It’s very well done and insightful, on the level of a Dan Carlin series.
Read Conquest of New Spain by Bernal Diaz he was a soldier in Cortes' expedition.
Be cool to do one on the Battle of Little Big Horn and Isandlwana.
Jesus Simon! Another channel?
Do u mind doing the Battle of the Battle of the Catalaunian Plains
Hold on, did you really just leave out that the Aztecs literally used the tribes around them as human farms to sacrifice to their gods?! When the Spanish saw the evil things they practiced that is when they started everything. The reason they succeeded was because those same tribes allied with them.
This video saved my life
such an utterly fascinating aspect of history. makes you wonder whats more bizarre, to be invaded by aliens, or to be the alien invader yourself
The Anti-Aztec Allies of the Spaniards were much more important than Spanish Steel or Arab Horses. The Aztec Vampire-Empire won itself enough enemies to insure its end, once Van Helsing showed up.
Not another crossover
You had me in the first half... then you totally lost me.
@@changer_of_ways_999 Van Helsing is the Spanish Conquistadores ln this scenario.
History as old as time. Most great empires have fallen because they had too many enemies
Love the people that act is if the Aztecs were a bunch of hippies living on peace and love and the Spanish were monsters. This was how the world worked back then . Everyone was uncivilized by today's standards but the Aztecs took it to a hole nother level. I wish we would stop romanticizing some of these indigenous people who were in all actually monster's even by the standard of their era
I suggest:
The battle of the Alamo.
The Trojan war.
The battle of Camden.
The battle of Cowpens.
The battle of Gettysburg.
Gettysburg and the Alamo got geographics videos.
I'm now realizing hot sauces are just named after myan & Aztec cities & kingdoms
Tabasco? 😅 Me too
@@andyyang3029 and chalulla
It is all very tragic, but in a strange way one must be in awe of the ability of sheer human intelligence and willpower.
Cortes's interpreter was called Marina or Malintzin. Marina is "Malina" and Cortez is the Malinche (owner of Malina) I know every Wikipedia article confuses this term but please look into it.
Malinche = Hernan Cortes.
Malina = Marina.
I’d like to request a war of the roses series
Could you do the Campanha da Legalidade?
Half way through and learning about the history of hot sauce names
Can you guys do the Taiping Rebellion next?
I think he covered it on Biographics
@@theawesomeman9821 I know but it would be nice to see in depth coverage
The Regulator-Moderator War of East Texas would make a good video.
Is this a film yet? It feels like it should be a film. Someone call Gibson
We need a movie about Cortez trying to escape and the men getting sacrificed!!
Makes me wonder if these events would’ve played out differently if Luis de Medina had successfully replaced Cortes to lead the expedition. Would the Aztec society have lasted longer? Would there have been a more peaceful coexistence between them and Spain? Maybe not, but I guess we will never know.
I had to stop what i was doing for this
can you do a video on the British Conquest of South Africa and the invention of the first concentration camps, I think this channel may do that story some justice
I think he already did.
Islawanda and Rourkes Drift would be great South African Battles to cover
40,000 sacrifices a year. Let that sink in.
At 40 seconds, what's the story of the little separate chunk that's south of the Yucatan?
I've always been a little skeptical about the exaggerated effects that some historians claim about Spanish smallpox killing many people in Tenochtitlan.
How come the Spanish Indian allies the Tlaxcalans didn't suffer with smallpox , even though they were even closer to the Spaniards than the Aztecs were ?
Close enough to actually inter marrying and having children. The vast majority of Latin Americans are a result of Spanish/Portuguese and Natives living together. I'm sure some of the relationships were... coersed but definitely not the majority.
Initial interactions between Natives and Europeans was far more mixed of good and bad but of course humans tend to focus on the bad in general.
@tzeentch999 The majority by a very narrow margin. There simply wasn't enough Spanish migration to have intermarriage with every native. There is still a large number of indigenous people in Latin America.
Seven years war please
It's very interesting that like most other culture, each Aztec city had their own Patreon God. It's one of the many constant in humanity history from the Sumerian to the Greek. I wonder what replace this constant in modern day?
Sports teams.
@@ashoat2388 Make senses, one team can be adulated as Gods in the arena where I am from.
Merchants
Would you say the Spaniards forced the Aztecs into their religion?
So what if they did
Goat
Damn guy, how many channels do you narrate for?
Story sounds better than Voices of The Past channel. More legitimate than how he told the story. How did Cortez get those ships onto the lakes? I thought he had taken them apart and transferred to the lake by crossing the mountains. A feet that was huge for its time. Not to mention the French sink8ng Cortez's ship (full of gold) heading into Spain.
13:41 Not just a bearded man, a man with a RED beard. See 0:25 and the depiction of Huitzilopochtli. That is the brother of the God that they believed Cortes to be, and you can see in that depiction that they also depict him as having had a red beard.
Hows is this not a movie yet
I wanna watch this movie
Excellent video. Thank you. BTW it’s “oriented “ not “orientated”.
Aztec war likeness worked to their disadvantage. Although I don’t think they could avoid it. With that religion one cannot avoid making enemies
Could do some videos about India's history? e.g. Ashoka's wars, Mughal-Maratha wars, Maharaja Ranjit Singh Ji, partition etc theres so many examples that western channels just don't touch
He did the partition video in his into the shadows channel and did taj mahal one on geographics channel
This is crazy bro, you couldn’t make up a story like this
I'm curious about that sauce of peppers and tomatoes
The Massacre of the Main Temple was caused by the nervousness of the spanish troops for being in the capital of the enemy territory (at most) or in neutral territory (at least), with citizens who barely understand your language (and who you pity understand theirs without translators) and in a celebration where there would be human sacrifices.
Aztecs: Seven civilizations (Tepanecas, Xochimilcas, Chalcas, Acolhuas, Tlahuicas, Tlaxcaltecas and Mexicas) that left Aztlán, temporarily took refuge in Chicomóztoc and continued migrating to the south; each tribe founding its kingdom according to the indications of its Gods.
This could be another stage for an Assassins Creed game.
I'm trying to think of a battle or war that's more obscure. Hmm, maybe the Football War between El Salvador and Honduras.
Hey, there's my 15th great grandfather.
...I was mid typing when you committed that crime against the Mexica language.
Huitzilopochtli: WEE-tsee-lo-POHT-chlee
Now, that -tli suffix at the end is actually a lateral lisp between the molars. So the chlee is actually a percussive sound of breath hissing through your teeth... And I haven't even got there yet but I already know what kind of damage you will be doing to my ancestral tongue and I'm ready for it. But I had to say something for old Weetslee...
[EDIT 1]:
...sigh...
Nahuatl: NAH-wat-tl
[EDIT 1]:
...double sigh...
Tenochtitlan: ten ohch teet TLAN
Queztalcoatl: keh tzal KWAH tl
It almost sounds like you're saying "now what" with a breathy tail. By the way, the word you know as "chocolate" is originally spelled "chocolatl" when the Spaniards introduced it to Europe from the new world.
The Aztec Empire may have been brutal and awful by modern (and contemporary) standards, but I still cannot help but feel sad that everything they ever did has been lost to time. All their treasures, all their arts, all their cities, with very little that has survived for us to remember them.
I appreciate your sentiment (so much lost), but many Mexicans would disagree that 'everything they ever did has been lost to time'. Their impact on Mexican identity is evident in the streets of CDMX; still evident in the art and soul of Mexico.
@@michaelmoraga2926 Don’t forget they were such a brutal cruel empire your people sided with the foreigners in the hundreds of thousands.
@@randomlygeneratedname7171 'my people?'...
I'm talking about Mexican cultural identity. Sorry, I don't really understand the point you are making.
@@michaelmoraga2926 I thought you’re Mexican. The point I made was the Spanish easily found allies in the new world trying to break the old order.
Of course other tribes sided with Spain they were Aztec rivals and wanted to be the top dogs from which Cortes promised them and he lied used them
Do a video on the Quebec biker War it will be epic!!!!
Can anyone link Mexico books about its history from beginning to the end
the thing about Montezuma II thinking about the Spanish people as gods was because the sieges that they hold out and won over the natives made them think that about them, they could't defeat the Spanish army of Hernán Cortés, but not like an actual god, just gods in terms of power (sadly not on men by that moment).
Simon's foreign word pronunciation kills me every time! 3:03 Guerrero does not equal Guillermo lol
Amazing history. Terribly sad what the indigenous people went through! Absolutely horrific.
"...which they ate with a sauce of pepper and tomatoes...", and just like that we have a new channel; Kitchengraphics XD
This! Omg that needs to happen. I'm gonna spam all his future videos with this
12:10 It's hard to say, 500 years later and with only Cortez's autobiography et al., but in Mexico, La Malinche or Doña Marina is held in high esteem. Not only because she gave birth to the First Mexican but because she and Cortez were actually partners in the overthrow of the Aztecs. So to suggest Cortez might have been lied to is to potentially insinuate a rift between the lovers that I don't think existed.
I hear La Malinche is despised in many parts of Mexico.
@@KingDanny9 I'm sure you can find people to hate any historical figure. But it's inarguable that she was driving force behind the Azteca destruction. And no Mexican with a shred of integrity or honesty would even entertain the argument that booting the Azteca from Mexico was probably the most emancipatory event in Mexican history. The Azteca were flat-out evil and no single Mexican didn't vastly benefit from their overthrow. If you google the phrase "Human sacrifice in Aztec culture" you will find the Wikipedia page which documents how 5 years before Columbus arrived in the New World, in 1487, the Azteca decided to re-consecrate their temple. Since the Azteca priests were bloodthirsty SOBs, they determined the only way to sanctify this temple, it is estimated by scholars that between 10K and 80K prisoners (from other tribes, of course) were exsanguinated down the front of the pyramid over the course of 4 days. The process for this was simple:
The crowded lines of prisoners filed up the stairs at the front of the Templo Mayor in Tenochtitlan and at the very top of the 60m tall pyramids, priests would first remove the beating heart (it had to be beating in order to satisfy their demon gods), subsequently disemboweling recently deceased indians. These organs were presented to the demon gods of the Aztecs and the heads were removed and allowed to roll down the front of the pyramid along with all the blood removed during this procedure.
If the highest estimate, 80,000, is believed, that's a rate of 10-15 sacrifices per minute, 22 hours/day for 4 days. Some Aztec apologist on Wikipedia tries to make the case that the number is "wildly exaggerated" but there's historical interviews with eyewitnesses from after the Aztecs were deposed who said that at least 4,000 victims were disposed of in this way but even 4,000 people is 1000 a day which, if you're running 10 hours/day would amount to one sacrifice every 45 seconds, 10 hrs/day for 4 days. And I dunno about you but to me that number's not much better in my opinion.
The Azteca were horrible and they weren't even Mexicans. They migrated down from the US on a religious pilgrimage and when they arrived, they slaughtered a huge number of native Mexica and took over the capitol and the language and pretended that it was "manifest destiny" ordained by Huitzilopochtli and Quetzalcoatl. In fact, their name wasn't even "Aztec". Azt is the Nahuatl word for "goose" or "water bird" and upon arriving they told the natives they came from a land of geese (Aztlán) and the nickname stuck. And the name kind of makes sense because the Aztecs spent decades migrating with the geese north and south for the changing seasons.
And their genetic dissimilarity to all the other tribes in Mexico didn't require genetic evidence to prove. You just need look at the other tribes living in Mexico at the time (short, very brown skin, not too heavy stature, curly-ish hair), vs the Aztecs (redder-skinned, taller, very straight hair). The Azteca were likely a cousin to either the Navajo, the wider Apache nation or the Sioux Nation vs a native tropical tribe. If I were to speculate, I'd say the Mississippian culture which built Cahokia and probably even responsible for the massive Poverty Point megalith in Louisiana. They were bloodthirsty and cruel but no one can argue they weren't extraordinarily prolific with their feats of engineering and their willingness to beat prisoner slaves to work until they fell dead from exhaustion. The Aztecs built the city of Tenochtitlan on the remnants of the previous city on the top of a volcano on top of a lake in the crater of the volcano and were able to harness the geothermal heat from the water for their plumbing and sanitation. And they built the literal biggest structures ever constructed on top of said lake using their techniques for building foundations. And google "cahokia" and compare it to the images you see when you google "tenochtitlan". Very similar.
I have never heard of La Malinche being held in high esteem.