eagle-cactus fruit; a fruit of the nopal cactus, with eagle associations; hearts taken from sacrificial victims in the month of Tlacaxipehualiztli were called this (metaphorically) Fr. Bernardino de Sahagún, Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain; Book 2 -- The Ceremonies, No. 14, Part III, eds. and transl. Arthur J. O. Anderson and Charles E. Dibble (Santa Fe and Salt Lake City: School of American Research and the University of Utah, 1951), 47.
flying eagle design Justyna Olko, Turquoise Diadems and Staffs of Office: Elite Costume and Insignia of Power in Aztec and Early Colonial Mexico (Warsaw: Polish Society for Latin American Studies and Centre for Studies on the Classical Tradition, University of Warsaw, 2005), 188.
a ritual that the Spaniards called "palo volador" (ca. 1582, Mexico City) Luis Reyes García, ¿Como te confundes? ¿Acaso no somos conquistados? Anales de Juan Bautista (Mexico: Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social, Biblioteca Lorenzo Boturini Insigne y Nacional Basílica de Guadalupe, 2001), 154–155.
the performers of the "palo volador" (called voladores de Papantla in Spanish); there is some confusion between the term starting with cua- (head) or cuauh- (eagle); if eagle, then perhaps the flyers are imitating eagles in flight (SW)