Tepoztopilli

Origins

Mesoamerica had no iron or steel before the Spanish conquest, but it had obsidian, a volcanic glass that can be struck into blades sharper than any metal edge. The peoples of central Mexico used obsidian blades set into wood to make fearsome weapons, and the best known is the Aztec Macuahuitl, a flat club edged with blades. The tepoztopilli applied the same idea to the spear. Its name is Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs, and it appears in pictorial manuscripts of the sixteenth century, including the Codex Mendoza and the Florentine Codex compiled by the friar Bernardino de Sahagún, among the arms of Aztec warriors. It was probably much older than the Aztec Empire, which rose in the fifteenth century.

Design & Construction

The tepoztopilli had a wooden shaft, roughly as long as a man is tall, and a long, flat, oval or leaf-shaped wooden head. Along both edges of the head ran rows of small prismatic obsidian blades, fitted into grooves and fixed with natural adhesives, so that the head could both thrust and cut. Like the macuahuitl, the weapon was light and very sharp, but the obsidian was brittle and could chip or break against hard armor or another weapon. Because it has not survived in original form, modern knowledge of its size and construction comes from the codices, from Spanish descriptions and from comparisons with the macuahuitl.

Combat Use

Aztec warfare aimed as much at taking captives for sacrifice as at killing, and warriors advanced in loose formations, opening with missiles from slings, bows and the atlatl before closing to fight hand to hand. The tepoztopilli gave a warrior reach in that close fight. Its long head could be used from behind the front rank, thrusting past the shields of the men in front, and Spanish accounts suggest it was dangerous against horses. Bernal Díaz del Castillo, who fought with Hernán Cortés, described Aztec spears edged with stone and wrote of their effect on Spanish troops. Against Spanish steel armor and helmets such as the Morion Helmet, however, obsidian blades were often defeated, and the Aztecs' way of fighting was poorly suited to an enemy intent on killing rather than capturing.

Legacy

The Aztec Empire fell in 1521 with the capture of Tenochtitlan by Cortés and his Tlaxcalan and other indigenous allies. The tepoztopilli is known today mainly from the codices and from reconstructions, and it is a staple of museum displays and of popular histories of Aztec warfare. It stands with the macuahuitl as a reminder that Mesoamerican weapons, made without metal, were sophisticated in their own right. Compare the European spears of the same era, the Pike and the Conquistadors' lances, and see also Aztec Empire Arms & Weapons.