The Aztecs

by Michael E Smith

  Some clues to the nature of markets outside of Tlatelolco are provided by an Early Colonial register of the tax paid by vendors in the market of Coyoacan, a city-state capital in the southern Valley of Mexico. The local tlatoani (king) collected the market tax in Spanish money; in pre-Hispanic times the tax would have been paid in cacao beans or cotton quachtli, the principal forms of money. Most of the Coyoacan vendors sold utilitarian goods, although some luxury items were mentioned. Vendors included both the artisans who produced the goods and merchants. Among the vendors offering utilitarian wares were specialized potters (both stewpot-makers and griddle-makers), basketmakers, obsidian-blade knappers, maguey-garment makers, broom sellers, lime sellers, medicine sellers, and lake-scum sellers. Merchants selling luxury goods included feather sellers, small-bell makers, and metalworkers. A drawing of an Aztec market from Friar Durán's account (figure 5.2) shows four vendors (on the top and left side) selling to three buyers. Two slaves, with wooden collars, are for sale; the female one demonstrates her skills at spinning cotton. In the center is a round altar where images of the market gods were erected.

  Figure 5.2 An Aztec market. The individuals with wooden collars are slaves (modified after Durán 1971:pl.29; drawing by Ellen Cesarski)

  Some Aztec markets specialized in particular types of goods. For example, markets in the towns of Azcapotzalco and Itzocan were widely known for the sale of slaves. The holy city of Cholula, in the Puebla Valley east of the Valley of Mexico, had a reputation as a center for trade in luxury items such as jewels, precious stones, and fine featherwork. The market in Acolman, a town in the Teotihuacan Valley, was famous for the sale of dogs. Friar Durán described it as follows:

  It was established that the dogs were to be sold in the periodic market at Acolman and that all those desirous of selling or buying were to go there. Most of the produce, then, which went to this tianguiz [market] consisted of small- and medium-sized dogs of all types, and everyone in the land went to buy dogs there – as they do today [ca. 1577], because at this time the same trade is carried on. One day I went to observe the market day there, just to be an eye-witness and discover the truth. I found more than four hundred large and small dogs tied up in crates, some already sold, others still for sale. And there were such piles of ordure that I was overwhelmed.5

  Only a few Aztec markets were specialized in this fashion. The most important distinctions among markets related less to specialized goods than to hierarchical position. The notion of a hierarchy of marketplaces is crucial for understanding the operation of the Valley of Mexico market system, an example of what economic anthropologists call a complex interlocking market system.6 In the Valley of Mexico there were four hierarchical levels of markets or central places. The huge Tlatelolco marketplace was the sole example of the top level. The second level consisted of a few cities whose markets were larger or more important than most. Texcoco, the second-largest city, was a second-level market center, as was Xochimilco. The third level comprised markets in city-state centers like Otumba, Coyoacan, and Acolman. Finally, the lowest hierarchical level was filled by the markets of the smaller towns and villages. The levels were distinguished by the numbers of people buying and selling (with greater numbers attending the higher-level markets), the quantity and variety of goods and services offered (with more offered at higher-level markets), and by frequency. The highest-level markets met daily, the city-state markets met once a week (every five days), and the smallest markets met even less frequently.

  The periodic schedule of the markets suited the needs of both merchants and consumers.7 Itinerant merchants traveled from town to town, setting up at each marketplace on market day. This circuit allowed them to cover a wider area, thereby satisfying a larger demand for their goods than if they were limited to a single marketplace. Most consumers did not need to attend the market every day, so the periodic schedule was convenient for them also.

  Aztec markets were not just economic institutions; they also served an important social function. Friar Durán described the social attraction of Aztec markets as follows:

  The markets were so inviting, pleasurable, appealing, and gratifying to these people that great crowds attended, and still attend, them, especially during the big fairs, as is well known to all. I suspect that if I said to a market woman accustomed to going from market to market: “Look, today is market day in such and such a town. What would you rather do, go from here right to Heaven or to the market?” I believe this would be her answer: “Allow me to go to the market first, and then I will go to Heaven.” She would be happier to lose those minutes of glory to visit the marketplace and walk about hither and thither without any gain or profit, to satisfy her hunger and whim to see the tianguiz.8

  The excursion into town on market day was a social event that provided one of the few opportunities for people who lived in different towns or villages to meet one another. On market day one could learn the latest news or gossip, talk with friends and colleagues, meet potential spouses, and generally keep up with the social life of the community, while also taking care of purchases and seeing the latest goods and styles. Most marketplaces had one or more shrines whose gods watched over the proceedings (figure 5.2), and market day also had its religious functions to complement its economic and social aspects.

  Merchants

  The occupation of merchant was an important one among the Aztecs. From written sources we know of at least two types of professional merchant: the pochteca or guild-merchants of the Valley of Mexico who traded on an international scale, and regional merchants whose activities were confined to smaller areas. In the Florentine Codex Friar Sahagún devoted all of book 9 to the pochteca, and as a result we have considerable information on their activities and lifestyle; in contrast, there are only scattered references to Aztec regional merchants.

  The pochteca were full-time professionals who occupied a special status within Aztec society that was lower than the nobility but higher than most commoners. Their activities included trade expeditions both within and outside of the empire, oversight of marketplaces in the Valley of Mexico, and foreign service for the emperor in the form of spying and fighting with enemy states. Although some of the pochteca trade was carried out directly for the state, the bulk of their transactions were privately motivated and financed. Most of the abundant luxury goods that Aztec nobles used to display their wealth and status – items such as jewelry, stone carvings, and fancy clothing – were either purchased from pochteca or made from materials brought by pochteca, who had obtained them from foreign or local sources.

  Some pochteca became quite wealthy to the point where their riches surpassed those of many nobles. Since merchants were not part of the noble class, however, they could not display their wealth openly in public. Much of their trade was carried out in secret to hide the extent of their success. When a group of pochteca returned home from a lengthy expedition, they arranged to enter the city under the cover of darkness:

  Not by day but by night they swiftly entered by boat. And as to their goods, no one could see how much there was; perhaps they carefully hid – covered up – all the boats . . . And when he had quickly come to unload what he had acquired, then swiftly he took away his boat. When it dawned, nothing remained.9

  The pochteca were organized into guilds with closely controlled, hereditary membership. These guilds existed in only 12 cities: Tenochtitlan, Tlatelolco, Azcapotzalco, Cuauhtitlan, Huitzilopochco, Chalco, Coatlinchan, Huexotla, Mixcoac, Otumba, Texcoco, and Xochimilco. These cities, all located in the Valley of Mexico, included the major political capitals (Tenochtitlan and Texcoco), the most active economic centers (Tlatelolco, Otumba, and Xochimilco), and other important city-state capitals. Merchants were hierarchically ranked; among the categories were “principal merchants” at the top, followed by slave dealers, disguised and spying merchants, and ordinary pochteca who were called oztomeca. At the bottom of the order were apprentice merchants who were in the process of learning the trade. The pochteca
guilds had their own laws of conduct, which they enforced in their own courts, distinct from the regular legal system.

  The pochteca organized large expeditions lasting many months to conduct their trade with distant areas. Each expedition would involve several merchants and apprentices as well as a crew of professional carriers or tlameme to bear the loads of goods in large backpacks (figure 5.3A). Friar Sahagún noted that the merchants were trained soldiers and carried weapons for protection: “As they traveled the road, they went girt for war. They bore their shields, their obsidian-bladed swords, [and] their devices, because they passed through the enemy's land, where they might die [and] where they took captives.”10

  Figure 5.3 Pochteca merchants. (A) Merchants following a trail with loads of merchandise on their backs (modified after Sahagún 1950–1982:bk.9:fig. 13) (B) Merchants in a market with some of their wares: gold finger rings, gold lip plugs, obsidian lip plugs, a jaguar skin, a necklace of jade and turquoise, and a pendant of gold (modified after Sahagún 1950–1982:bk.9:fig.3; drawings by Ellen Cesarski)

  The merchants would plan their itinerary carefully with stops at a succession of marketplaces in order to obtain the best bargains possible. In Mesoamerica, these merchants were permitted to cross foreign borders, even those between hostile enemies. When pochteca traded in markets outside of the empire, they often served as spies for the Mexica, gathering information on resources, armies, and defenses. A portion of their trade was conducted directly for the emperor. For example, the emperor Ahuitzotl (r. 1486–1502) gave a group of pochteca 1,600 cotton cloths, which they traded for such luxury items as jade, shell, and feathers for the ruler. He also provided an armed guard for the expedition, which passed through or near enemy territory.

  Most of the goods traded by the pochteca were luxury items of high value but low bulk that could be transported easily by human carrier.11 As described by Friar Durán, the profession of merchant involved:

  buying and selling, going forth to all the markets of the land, bartering cloth for jewels, jewels for feathers, feathers for stones, and stones for slaves, always dealing in things of importance, of renown, and of high value. These [men] strengthened their social position with their wealth.12

  Among the trade goods of the pochteca, listed by Sahagún, were elaborately decorated capes and skirts, colorful tropical bird feathers, numerous objects of gold, necklaces, spinning bowls, earspools, obsidian blades and knives, shells, coral, needles, animal fur and skins, various herbs and dyes, slaves, and jewelry of jade, jadeite, and turquoise (figure 5.3B). The pochteca worshiped a number of gods, and it is not surprising that these included gods who presided over space and the cosmos, warrior gods, and gods who could provide humans with riches.13

  Far less information exists about the regional merchants, called tlanecuilo, who were not part of pochteca guilds. We do know that these middlemen were common participants in Aztec markets. They tended to trade in a smaller range of goods than the pochteca, and most of their goods were foodstuffs and utilitarian items, not luxuries. These included cacao, maize, amaranth, chia, chili, tortillas, turkeys, fish, salt, sandals, cotton, gourd bowls, baskets, and wood. Many of the tlanecuilo specialized in a particular type of good, for example salt was a common specialty. The division of labor among merchants, with pochteca trading primarily in luxuries and tlanecuilo in food and utilitarian goods, ensured that markets throughout the empire were well supplied with all types of goods.14 How did consumers buy these goods?

  Money

  Some marketplace exchanges may have been carried out by bartering one good for another, but the Aztecs also used at least two forms of money: cacao beans and cotton textiles.15 Cacao beans grow in large pods on domesticated cacao trees in the southern tropics of Mesoamerica (figure 5.4). People removed the pods and separated the large beans from a white pulp and then dried the beans (figure 5.5). Cacao beans were valuable because they had to be brought to central Mexico from distant lowland areas, of which the southernmost imperial province of Xoconochco was the primary source. Although the Aztecs made a form of hot chocolate beverage, only nobles could afford to drink it. Most people used cacao as currency.16

  Figure 5.4 Cacao pods. The cacao beans are removed from large pods that grow directly out of the trunk of the cacao tree (photograph by Janine Gasco; reproduced with permission)

  Figure 5.5 Cacao beans in a gourd (photograph by Janine Gasco; reproduced with permission)

  Cacao beans were used for small purchases. For example, one obsidian blade was worth 5 cacao beans. An Early Colonial list of market prices from 1545 gives an idea of the worth of various goods as expressed in cacao beans, assuming that prices had not changed too radically in the 25 years following the Spanish Conquest:

  One good turkey hen is worth 100 full cacao beans, or 120 shrunken cacao beans . . .

  A hare or forest rabbit is worth 100 cacao beans each.

  A small rabbit is worth 30.

  One turkey egg is worth 3 cacao beans.

  An avocado newly picked is worth 3 cacao beans . . .

  One large tomato will be equivalent to a cacao bean . . .

  A long narrow green chile, 5 (for a cacao bean) . . .

  A newly picked prickly pear cactus fruit is equivalent to 1 cacao bean, when fully ripe two cactus fruit (for a cacao bean) . . .

  Chopped firewood [a bundle or log] is equivalent to 1 cacao bean . . .

  A tamale is exchanged for a cacao bean . . .

  Fish wrapped in maize husks is worth 3 cacao beans.17

  The use of cacao for currency was so widespread and economically important that counterfeiting and deceptions were serious problems. Unscrupulous vendors would remove the outer skin from a bean and stuff it with dirt or sawdust. The doctored “beans” were then mixed with a batch of real beans to be passed off on naive customers. That this practice was commonplace is implied by a Nahuatl-language Christian confessional manual recorded by Friar Alonso de Molina in 1569. The priests would ask merchants:

  And when you sold cacao beans, perhaps you mixed your bad cacao beans with the good ones to merchandise them all together, whereby you deceive the people? . . . And perhaps you toast the small, the shrunken cacao beans, whereby you enlarge them so they will appear plump?18

  There were even specific laws to punish cacao counterfeiters.

  For larger purchases, the Aztecs used quachtli, cotton capes of standardized sizes. Any family, noble or commoner, could weave quachtli as part of normal domestic cloth production (see chapter 4). Nobles, city-states, and temples also received them through tax payments. There were different sizes and grades of quachtli with corresponding levels of value. Three common grades were worth 65, 80, and 100 cacao beans each, and some highly valuable examples were worth up to 300 cacao beans. It was said that 20 quachtli could support a commoner for a year in Tenochtitlan. Among the expensive items that could be purchased with this money were gold lip plugs (25 quachtli each) and necklaces of fine jade beads (600 quachtli).

  Cacao and cotton textiles were used as currency not only in Aztec central Mexico, but throughout Mesoamerica in the Late Postclassic period. In addition to these two products, a number of other commodities served as more limited media of exchange or money in various regions and contexts. Among these goods were T-shaped bronze “axes,” bronze bells, feather quills filled with gold dust, salt, Pacific seashells of the genus Spondylus, and precious stones.19

  Material Evidence for Aztec Commerce

  The ethnohistoric accounts of markets and merchants reviewed above provide a good overview of the forms and organization of Aztec commerce, but they are short on concrete information about the movements of the specific goods that were exchanged. Archaeology has begun to fill in this missing information. In some cases, the mere presence of distinctive foreign goods at a site provides evidence for trade. For example, when Aztec III Black-on-Orange ceramics, manufactured in the Valley of Mexico, turn up at distant sites, we know that some sort of exchange must have taken place. In ot
her cases, the origins of artifacts cannot be determined easily, but sophisticated techniques of chemical analysis can reveal the place of origin for some of the raw materials used in their manufacture. These techniques, which have been applied primarily to obsidian and pottery, allow archaeologists to trace exchange routes and trade connections with great precision. Other trade goods that have been documented archaeologically include turquoise, jadeite, rock crystal, and other precious stones, bronze, shell, and even painted codices. Here I focus on the more extensively studied obsidian and ceramics.

  Obsidian Exchange

  Obsidian, because of its superior cutting abilities and the large numbers of finished blades that could be produced from a single core, was one of the most widely traded goods in ancient Mesoamerica. The volcanic glass occurs in a limited number of natural deposits (all in highland areas), and obsidian from each geological source has a slightly different chemical composition. When an obsidian artifact is analyzed by one of several chemical techniques, its composition can be compared to samples taken from the various source areas to determine the geological location from which the obsidian originated.20 Unfortunately we cannot always determine the places where the material may have been worked between the quarry and the final location of the artifact at a site.

  Fortunately for archaeologists, obsidian from the Pachuca source area has a distinctive green tint that easily distinguishes it from most other Mesoamerican obsidians without the need for expensive chemical analyses. Pachuca was the major source of obsidian for the Aztecs, and artifacts made of the distinctive green material dominate the obsidial collections at virtually every known Aztec site. Even at Otumba, whose city-state territory included a major obsidian source, obsidian from Pachuca was imported for its superior qualities of prismatic blade manufacture. Sites like Cuexcomate and Yautepec in Morelos have yielded large quantities of obsidian, which was much preferred for tools over chert, an abundant, locally available stone. Of the tens of thousands of obsidian artifacts I have excavated at these sites, over 90 percent are of the green Pachuca variety.21