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)
nobleman through war deeds or other personal merit, not through descent James Lockhart, Nahuatl as Written: Lessons in Older Written Nahuatl, with Copious Examples and Texts (Stanford: Stanford University Press and UCLA Latin American Studies, 2001), 231.