The Astonishing Axayacatl

The sixth king of the Aztecs, named Axayacatl (pronounce: ah-shah-YAH-cahtl), who ruled the Aztec Empire from 1469 to 1481, is primarily remembered for subjugating Tenochtitlan’s sister-city, Tlatelolco in 1473. In Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs, the noun axayacatl (also appearing as axaxayacatl) literally means “Water-Face” (Pic 1). Unexpectedly, though, the term axayacatl refers not to some lofty concept or fierce animal suited to represent a king, but to a lowly water bug that the Spanish described as a “common marsh fly”, employed as food by the Aztecs. Today we know this insect as the “water-boatman” of the Family Corixidae, a plant-eating aquatic bug that can be extremely abundant in freshwater and brackish lakes. Water-boatmen scull around lakes and ponds, using their oar-like legs to dart through their watery home. The axayacatl was indeed super abundant in Lake Texcoco, the beautiful setting of the capital of the Aztec Empire, Tenochtitlan.

Pic 1: The name-glyph of King Axayacatl, composed of a stream of water (‘a-’) and a face (‘xayacatl’). Codex Mendoza folio 10 (L), Codex Telleriano-Remensis folio 34v (R)

We know that the Aztecs ate both adult axayacatl, as well as their eggs, which they called ahuauhtli (pronounce: ah-WOW-tlee), which means literally “amaranth of the water”; amaranth is a grain made up of tiny round seeds (about the size of poppy seeds) used by the Aztecs. The adult insects were captured during certain times of the year by fishermen using large nets made of cloth. After collection, the water-boatmen were dried in the sun, ground into a dough, cooked in lime water, and then sold in the markets as cone-shaped tamales wrapped in corn husks.
To collect the eggs, ahuauhtli “farmers” would canoe out onto Lake Texcoco and plant one end of a long rope to the mud with a stick or rock. To the free end of this rope were tied bundles of grass at regular intervals so that the bundles floated just below the surface (pic 3). The water-boatmen liked to lay their eggs in these reed bundles. After several days or weeks, the rope was hauled in, the reed bundles were sun-dried, and then the eggs were shaken off and collected.

Pic 3: ‘Catching the Axaxayacatl’, Florentine Codex Book 11

Just how abundant was the axayacatl in Aztec times? In the late 1800s, one observer estimated that Lake Texcoco, which had been partially drained and was much smaller than it was in the 1500s, contained over 3.6 trillion (12 zeroes!) water-boatmen, and that the combined weight of the adults and their eggs was about 40 million pounds, or 18,321 metric tons! It is thought that the Aztecs harvested about 3,900 metric tons (or 8.5 million pounds!) of water-boatmen and their eggs annually. Amazingly, ahuauhtli (called ahuautle or ahuahutle in modern Spanish) continued to be harvested in enormous quantities until World War II, with tons shipped yearly to various European countries for use as pet, bird or fish feed.

Pic 5: The water-boatman, called ‘axayacatl’ by the Aztecs, was super abundant in Lake Texcoco, and a prized, high protein food source. Photograph courtesy of Peter Bryant.