Again Giddianhi feigns concern for Lachoneus and his people. This choice between submission or destruction, as noted above, has Aztec parallels—and possibly in earlier times as well; but direct evidence is not available for other cultures or periods. The Aztecs made this demand by a personal ambassador, since they did not have a writing system that could encode words. According to Hassig, “The Aztecs often sent an ambassador to a foreign group to ask that it submit to Tenochtitlán and become a tributary of the Aztec state. If it refused, the area was a candidate for conquest, and the killing of an ambassador definitively meant war.” While the mode of delivering the message is different, the purpose is the same: a formal invitation to submit, which, if refused, results in war.