Old SymbolsWhere every symbol began

Plate 1 A warrior’s face looking out from an eagle-head helmet

Eagle warrior

The eagle warriors and jaguar warriors were the elite soldiers of the Mexica (Aztecs), nobles who wore suits imitating the golden eagle and the jaguar. They were dedicated to the sun.

Aztec symbols and gods. Also called aztec eagle warrior, cuauhtli warrior, jaguar warrior.

Meaning

The archaeologist Leonardo López Luján calls the full-body eagle suit the highest expression of eagle-feather insignia among the Mexica, worn by the brave soldiers known as cuauhtli océlotl, “eagle, jaguar”. The Dominican friar Diego Durán wrote in the sixteenth century that they were knights who flew “like eagles” in arms and courage, and so were called eagles or jaguars (“tigres” in his Spanish). They took the sun as their patron, he wrote, and he named them “knights of the sun”. Only nobles could join, López Luján notes. In sixteenth-century colonial documents, the codices Azcatitlan, Florentine and Tlatelolco and the Lienzo de Tlaxcala they always wear helmets and suits that copy the golden eagle and the jaguar.

Origin and history

Guilhem Olivier writes that the military orders of ancient Mexico took the jaguar and the eagle as their guardian animals, and Sahagún’s informants called the jaguar “noble, princely, the lord of the animals”. A small altar in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the Altar of the Warriors of the Sun, shows an eagle and a jaguar carved face to face, the Nahua pairing cuauhtli, océlotl. The jaguar was also the double of Tezcatlipoca.

The eagle and jaguar warriors served the sun in ritual. López Luján writes that they took an active part in the gladiatorial sacrifice of the month Tlacaxipehualiztli. Under the ruler Ahuítzotl, from 1486, a ceremonial centre for elite warriors was built at Malinalco.

The eagle warriors of the Templo Mayor

A near life-size clay eagle warrior from the House of the Eagles, north of the Templo Mayor, stands in room 4 of the Museo del Templo Mayor. INAH describes the eagle warriors as one of the highest ranks of the Mexica army, representing the rising sun. Two such figures flanked the building’s west door, Eduardo Matos Moctezuma writes, and two figures of Mictlantecuhtli the north door. The building takes its name from the eagle heads carved on its steps, and painted benches inside still show a procession of armed warriors.

Eagle suits were made only in the capital

López Luján notes that eagle-warrior suits are missing from the tribute lists, though jaguar-warrior suits were demanded from the provinces. He takes this as a sign that Tenochtitlan kept the making of eagle suits for itself: the capital imported only live eagles, and its featherworkers plucked the birds kept in captivity there.

See also

Tezcatlipoca (smoking mirror), Mictlantecuhtli, Eagle on a cactus, Quetzalcoatl (the feathered serpent), Huitzilopochtli, Tlaloc.

Sources

  1. Bajo el signo del Sol. Plumas, pieles e insignias de águila en el mundo mexica (Leonardo López Luján, Arqueología Mexicana), Leonardo López Luján, “Bajo el signo del Sol. Plumas, pieles e insignias de águila en el mundo mexica”, Arqueología Mexicana no. 159, pp. 28–35, Arqueología Mexicana (Editorial Raíces / INAH), article text
  2. Trajes de guerrero águila (Leonardo López Luján, Arqueología Mexicana), Leonardo López Luján, “Bajo el signo del Sol. Plumas, pieles e insignias de águila en el mundo mexica”, Arqueología Mexicana no. 159, pp. 28–35, Arqueología Mexicana (Editorial Raíces / INAH), article text
  3. Recinto de las Águilas o Casa de las Águilas, Templo Mayor de Tenochtitlan (Eduardo Matos Moctezuma, Arqueología Mexicana), Eduardo Matos Moctezuma, “Recinto de las Águilas o Casa de las Águilas”, Arqueología Mexicana special edition no. 56, pp. 10–32, Arqueología Mexicana (Editorial Raíces / INAH), guide text
  4. Guerrero Águila (INAH, foto del día), Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, foto del día, Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, photo note
  5. Los guerreros pintados de la Casa de las Águilas (INAH, foto del día), Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, foto del día, Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, photo note
  6. El Altar de los Guerreros del Sol (Leonardo López Luján, Guilhem Olivier and Javier Urcid, Arqueología Mexicana), Leonardo López Luján et al., “El Altar de los Guerreros del Sol del Metropolitan Museum of Art de Nueva York”, Arqueología Mexicana no. 193, pp. 23–31, Arqueología Mexicana (Editorial Raíces / INAH), article text
  7. El jaguar como modelo social: el brujo, el guerrero y el rey (Guilhem Olivier, Arqueología Mexicana), Guilhem Olivier, “El jaguar en la cosmovisión mexica”, Arqueología Mexicana no. 72, pp. 52–57, Arqueología Mexicana (Editorial Raíces / INAH), article text
  8. Conquista mexica de Malinalco (Beatriz Zúñiga Bárcenas, Arqueología Mexicana), Beatriz Zúñiga Bárcenas, “Malinalco en la época prehispánica”, Arqueología Mexicana no. 177, pp. 38–43, Arqueología Mexicana (Editorial Raíces / INAH), article text
  9. El jaguar en la cosmovisión mexica (Guilhem Olivier, Arqueología Mexicana), Guilhem Olivier, “El jaguar en la cosmovisión mexica”, Arqueología Mexicana no. 72, pp. 52–57, Arqueología Mexicana (Editorial Raíces / INAH), article text

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Last reviewed October 3, 2026 by Rory Hansen. How we research

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