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Did they have a preferred hand for wielding weapons?

ORIGINAL QUESTION received from - and thanks to - S Beckstrom: Did the Aztecs or any Mesoamerican tribes have a biased hand which warriors wielded their swords with? If they did have a preferred hand what was the reason behind it? in many other cultures we see the right hand is considered the correct hand for a weapon to be wielded by warriors and i wonder if they had the same belief? (Answered by Ian Mursell/Mexicolore)

According to a highly respected source (long-standing world authority on Aztec warfare Ross Hassig), yes they did -
’There are no accounts of battles from the individual soldier’s view. But among the Indians taken to Spain was a young warrior who re-enacted a battle scene that was described by Peter Martyr d’Anghera:-
’In his right hand he carried a simple wooden sword, without the stones which ordinarily decorated this weapon, for the battle swords have their two edges hollowed out and filled with sharp stones... In his other hand he carried a native shield... (emphasis added).
’In combat the left foot and shield are kept forward. In striking, the right foot advances to throw the body weight forward and permit the arm to achieve maximum extension while delivering the blow.’

As to why this should have been the case, the only reason we can come up with is that the left hand side of the body was historically believed to be ‘the part of the body most heavily charged with vital force’, and associated with the female and defensive side (follow link below to learn more...)

HOWEVER, even a cursory study of the iconography of Mexican codices, you soon realise that, in both pre- and post-invasion sources BOTH right and left hands are shown holding and wielding weapons! We’ve added a nice example here, from the Codex Zouche-Nuttall, in which, fighting each other, the warriors on either side hold weapons in opposite hands!

So it looks like they chose the natural path - letting each warrior choose their own ‘leading’ arm, though in practice, as today, the majority would have been - and hence are depicted - right-handed...

Reference:-
• Aztec Warfare: Imperial Expansion and Political Control by Ross Hassig, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1988, pp. 101-102.

Picture sources:-
• 1st image scanned from our own copy of Códice Durán - Historia de las Indias de Nueva España e Islas de Tierra Firme, Arrendedora Internacional, Mexico City, 1990
• 2nd image scanned from our own copy of the ADEVA facsimile edition of the Codex Zouche-Nuttall, Graz, Austria, 1987.

‘Left hand side rules!’

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