Since its beginning in 2017, the Conquest of America collection by John Jenkins has always been one of my personal favorites. The pieces depict the Aztec army in a never seen before level of accuracy. This month, we saw the arrival of the JJ-AZ-18A - Aztec Warrior. So this could be the good time to see where all those Aztec pieces are coming from while having a look at this new release.

When the Spanish Conquistador arrived in Central America, the place was already having a bad time. Series of droughts were causing famines, people were dying of smallpox and war was already raging amongst the different tribes. Those events eventually lead to the fall of the Aztec Empire when the Spanish army and their allied tribes took the city of Tenochtitlan. Motivated by their ambition to christianise this land, the conquistadors destroyed many Aztec books. By doing so, many details of the Aztec culture and history were lost.

About twenty years after the fall of the Aztec Empire, the viceroy of New-Spain, Antonio de Mendoza, requested the writing of a book about the Aztec culture and their conquests prior to the fall of their empire. An anonymous priest went to Tenochtitlan to meet with survivors from the Spanish conquest and regrouped all that he could in a book known today as the Codex Mendoza.

The depiction of the founding of the Aztec capital Tenochtitlan on the first page of the Codex Mendoza.
This iconography is still visible today on the Mexican flag.

Despite being fragmentary, the stories reported in this book are still giving us one of the best glimpse of what life and war was like in the pre-columbian Aztec Empire. The codex also contains numerous color illustrations representing the different outfits associated with the different social status. Therefore, this codex is one of the most useful references and we can see its legacy in many pieces from the Conquest of America by John Jenkins.

The JJ-AZ-22 - Aztec With Captive and the reference illustration from the Codex Mendoza.

In the case of the JJ-AZ-18A, the color scheme used as reference for this piece can also be seen in the Codex Mendoza. The clothes he is wearing is called a Tlahuiztli. It was mostly made of cotton and the name is a reference to the goddess Tlazolteotl, the goddess of cotton. This warrior also wears a copilli on his head and holds a shield with hawk scratches marking. In his hand and ready to strike, we can see a sharp macuahuitl. On his face, an enormous golden nose plug is visible.

The JJ-AZ-18A and the corresponding color scheme from the Codex Mendoza.

This outfit on this warrior was given to soldiers who managed to capture two enemies in their career. So it was a relatively common outfit and it’s not also the first time that we can see it on a piece from this collection. However, the motion on this piece is very unique. The arc drawn by the body, arm and weapon as the right knee up in the air give the illusion that the warrior is really jumping and almost looks like not touching to the base. This is a good example of a well captured motion.

Some of the pieces from the Conquest of America collection.
Notice the red warrior on the left sharing similar colors as the JJ-AZ-18A.

With more than fifty different pieces and still growing steadily, the Conquest of America collection contains the best toy soldier representations of the Aztec army ever done. The releases of the new JJ-AZ-18A and his yellow version JJ-AZ-18B are good examples of the dedication from John Jenkins to bring the warriors from the Codex Mendoza back to life. I now leave you with a link to the codex pages in case you would like to try to find more of the inspirations for the pieces from this collection.