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)
the door sill of a house or building Sahagún, Bernardino de, Antonio Valeriano, Alonso Vegerano, Martín Jacobita, Pedro de San Buenaventura, Diego de Grado, Bonifacio Maximiliano, Mateo Severino, et al. Historia general de las cosas de Nueva España (Florentine Codex), Ms. Mediceo Palatino 218–20, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Florence, MiBACT, 1577. Available at Digital Florentine Codex/Códice Florentino Digital, edited by Kim N. Richter, Alicia Maria Houtrouw, Kevin Terraciano, Jeanette Peterson, Diana Magaloni, and Lisa Sousa, bk. 11, fol. 120r. Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2023. https://florentinecodex.getty.edu/en/book/11/folio/120r?spTexts=&nhTexts= . Accessed 12 November 2025.
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.