Nuevo México is often incorrectly believed to have taken its name from the post-independent nation of Mexico. But as early as 1561[5] (260 years before Mexican independence), Spanish colonial explorers used el Nuevo México to refer to Cíbola, cities of wealth reported to exist far to the north of the recently conquered Aztec Empire.[6][7][8] This name also evoked the Mexica people's accounts of their ancestral origin in Aztlán to the north before their migration to Mexico centuries prior. The Nahuatl-language history of the Mexica people, the Crónica Mexicayotl, dated to 1609, makes this identification explicit, describing how the Mexica left "their home there in Old Mexico Aztlan Quinehuayan Chicomoztoc, which today they call New Mexico (yancuic mexico)."

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