Which Mesoamerican culture believed that fallen warriors returned to earth as hummingbirds?

The Aztecs were a Mesoamerican culture that flourished in central Mexico in the post-classical period from 1300 to 1521. The Aztec god of war called ‘Huitzilopochtli’ is often depicted as a hummingbird. It was also believed that fallen warriors would return to earth as hummingbirds and butterflies.

In fact, one of the family of languages of the Uto-Aztecan called ‘Nahuatl has a word for the hummingbird. It is an onomatopoeic word ‘huitzil’ derived from the sounds of the bird’s wing-beats and zooming flight.

Hummingbird talismans or amulets were worn by the Aztecs, both as artistic representations and as fetishes, some made from actual hummingbird parts. These were symbolic of the bird’s vigor, energy, and propensity to do work along with their sharp beaks that represented instruments of weaponry, bloodletting, penetration, and intimacy. For the warrior who wore a hummingbird talisman, it represented his skill at arms and warfare.

Today, hummingbirds are native to the Americas. They are the smallest of birds measuring only 7.5 - 13 cm (3 - 5 in) in length. They are well known for the humming sound emitted by their wings, which flap at high frequencies audible to human as the bird hovers in mid-air.

Trinidad and Tobago are known as “the land of the hummingbird” with displays appearing on the nations’s coat of arms, the 1-cent coin and an image of the bird appears as an emblem on its national airline, Caribbean Airlines.