They had seen an eagle perched on a pr*ckly pear cactus.
The Aztecs were a Mesoamerican culture that developed in central Mexico in the post-classic period from 1300 to 1521. The Aztec peoples encompassed different ethnic groups of central Mexico, especially those groups who spoke the Nahuatl language and who dominated large parts of Mesoamerica from the 14th to the 16th centuries. They organized into city-states.
The Aztec Empire constituted a confederation of three city-states established in 1427.