Nahua

Nahua religion is best known through the Aztecs, who saw the world through teotl, the sacred power that takes form in many gods. Huitzilopochtli was the god of the Mexica and Tlaloc the rain god. Festivals, government and even war were timed by the calendar.

Temples were stepped pyramids buried under a new layer every 52 years. At Tenochtitlan the Great Temple carried twin shrines of Huitzilopochtli and Tlaloc, and the high priests of both bore the title Quetzalcoatl.

Tenochtitlan was founded in 1325; in 1519–1521 Cortés and his Tlaxcaltec allies overthrew the Aztec empire, and in 1524 twelve Franciscans arrived to begin the systematic conversion of the Nahuas. The old beliefs live on in Catholic forms in the cult of the Virgin of Guadalupe and the Day of the Dead.