Daily Life of the Aztecs

by Jacques Soustelle

  example, cultivated a field 1,600 yards long and 800 wide on behalf of the Mexican emperor. Thus an important stock of land was at the disposal of the emperor and his allied kings, and they could allocate the income either to a temple or as pay to an official, a judge or an officer. In a society that did not have money, pay consisted essentially of the income from a piece of land. There are a great many examples of estates being given to warriors as a reward for their achievements. 91

  At the time of which we are speaking an important development was beginning to make itself apparent; for although in theory property was still communal, in fact the land that had been attributed by way of life-interest to a tecuhtli was transmitted by him to his heirs. These estates then became pillalli, 'land belonging to pilli'; that is to say that the sons of dignitaries who already by their birth had a kind of right to be preferred in the higher appointments were also allowed the advantage of inherited revenues. A private domain was building itself up at the expense of the public domain. It would be an exaggeration to say that the emperor and the dignitaries were great landed proprietors, for in fact an over-riding law of communal possession was felt to exist: but it would be equally mistaken to assert that this law alone was recognised in practice.

  At this time Aztec society was in a state of flux, of transition, and the taking of land into private hands was continually coming, as it were, to the surface: the customs and practices of real life grew more and more unlike those of tradition; for whereas the old way established one general standard for all by the sharing of communal land, inequality in landed wealth had in fact become the rule. While the maceualli made the best of his plot, the high officials enjoyed important possessions in several provinces, following the example of the emperor, who owned country houses and pleasure gardens in many places.

  This inequality was no less striking in what may be termed liquid wealth. Although there was no money, certain commodities, goods or objects ordinarily served as measures of value and as means of exchange -- the quachtli,

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  or length of cloth, with its multiple the load (twenty lengths); the cocoa-nib, the small change of the Aztecs, with its multiple the xiquipilli, a bag holding or supposed to hold eight thousand of them; little T-shaped copper hatchets 92 and quills filled with gold-dust. Apart from these exchangegoods, the treasure of the emperor or a private person consisted of an immense variety of agricultural products, such as maize, beans, oil seeds, many-coloured feathers, precious and semi-precious stones, jewels, clothes, ornaments, etc. This wealth was derived from two sources, tribute or tax, and commerce. And it is at this point that the traders come upon the scene.

  The whole population of the city and the empire paid taxes, except dignitaries, priests, pilli, children, orphans, paupers 93 and, naturally, the slaves. The Mexican maceualtin paid principally in work; the traders and the artisans in commodities or the goods of their trade; and they paid every twenty or every eighty days. The tribute that each city or village was obliged to pay varied widely according to the circumstances in which it had been incorporated into the empire, and according to local resources.

  According to the Indian conception of it, the original institution of tribute was based upon a true contract, a contract of redemption. The conqueror had unlimited rights over the conquered: but the victorious city agreed to give up some of them in exchange for a solemn undertaking. After the fighting, very hard bargaining would begin: 94 the defeated would try to come off as lightly as possible, while the Mexicans would threaten the renewal of hostilities. In the end they would come to an agreement, and the victors would never fail to record the adversaries' enforced submission in due form. 'Do not come to us later on and complain that we require too much of you, since now you agree with it,' was the sense of the observations that one finds in the native histories.

  Each province, and within each province each city or town, had to supply a certain quantity of objects or produce once or twice a year, and the lists given in the Codex Mendoza show how varied these contributions were. One province

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  of the 'Cold Country', Xilotepec, had a yearly tax of 800 loads of women's clothes (that is, 16,000 articles), 816 loads of men's loincloths, 800 loads of embroidered skirts, 3,216 loads of quachtli, 2 suits for warriors with their headgear and their shields, 4 large baskets of maize and other grain, and lastly from 1 to 4 live eagles.

  The province of Tochpan, on the shores of the Gulf, had to furnish 6,948 loads of cloaks of different kinds, 800 loads of loincloths and 800 of skirts, 800 loads of peppers, 20 sacks of feathers, 2 jade necklaces, 1 turquoise necklace, 2 turquoise-mosaic disks, 2 sumptuous costumes for the military chiefs. Tochtepec, which was the traders' headquarters on the frontiers of the southern and the eastern countries, paid, besides a great many clothes, 16,000 balls of rubber, 24,000 bunches of parrot's feathers, 80 packets of quetzal plumes, 1 shield, 1 diadem, 1 gold headband and 2 gold necklaces, amber and crystal jewels, and cocoa.

  The tribute-lists mention cotton and agave-fibre cloth, clothes of all kinds, maize, grain, cocoa, honey, salt, peppers, tobacco, building material, furniture, crockery, gold from the Mixtec provinces, turquoises and jade from the eastern coast, cochineal, incense, rubber, paper from Quauhnahuac and Huaxtepec, shells from Cihuatlán, live birds from Xilotepec and from Oxitipan. In quachtli alone the tribute brought in more than 100,000 loads every year: now, as it has been shown, a load of quachtli was reckoned to be the equivalent of a year's living for one person. It was therefore 100,000 'yearly livings' that came into Mexico in this one form, without speaking of all the other products mentioned above. For example, the tribute brought 32,000 large sheets of paper into the capital, 152,320 loincloths, 30,884 bundles of precious feathers, etc.

  No doubt a certain proportion of this wealth was shared out among the districts of the capital, which, however, did not (at least in theory) take more than two fifths of the levy, two fifths being reserved for Texcoco and one fifth for Tlacopan. But it is quite sure that the emperor and his chief dignitaries took the lion's share: after the fall of Cuetlaxtlan, Motecuhzoma I, his deputy Tlacaeleltzin and

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  the leader of the expedition allotted themselves three quarters of the tribute raised from this province; only a quarter continued its journey towards the districts, and no once can tell what trifling share actually reached the common people. 95

  Considering the size of these figures, it is natural to suppose that the taxation was very heavy; and this was certainly the impression that the Spaniards received on their arrival, when they heard the complaints and the protests of the Totonacs. 96 But this tribe had been quite recently subjected, and it hated the Mexicans: perhaps its evidence is not to be taken as literally true. One must also remember that some provinces were very densely populated. Alonso de Zurita, an excellent Spanish official and a most accurate observer, particularly states 'In all this there was a great deal of regularity and of attentiveness to see that no one person was more heavily burdened than the rest. Each man paid little; and as there were many men it was possible to bring together great quantities (of goods) with little work and no vexation.' 97

  The towns and the villages of the valley of Mexico were assessed in a manner peculiar to themselves: they were required, each in turn, to see to the upkeep of the palaces of the three allied sovereigns, and to supply them with domestic servants and provisions. Nezaualcoyotl, the king of Texcoco, had divided the country surrounding his capital into eight districts, each of which was obliged to perform these duties for a given period each year, under the supervision of a calpixgui.

  If Ixtlilxochitl 98 is to be believed the amount that these districts had to provide was very great indeed: a royal household would consume no fewer than a hundred turkeys daily.

  It is certain that the rulers and those close to them were able to amass huge quantities of goods from the great inflow of wealth into Mexico and the allied cities which resulted from the tribute: it is equally sure that the
ir expenses were enormous. Both Nezaualpilli at Texcoco, with his immense harem and his forty favourite wives, of

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  whom one alone, the daughter of the Mexican emperor Axayacatl, had more than two thousand people in her service, and Motecuhzoma II at Mexico, who was perpetually surrounded by three thousand attendants in the palace, without counting the eagles, snakes and jaguars which he kept in special quarters and which ate five hundred turkeys a day, lived like potentates, in the midst of an abundance from which an ever-increasing train of followers grew rich. But on the other hand, as there was no distinction between the public treasury and the sovereign's private fortune, it was he who gave out food and drink to the whole population during the month Uey tecuilhuitl, the time of the gap between harvests when the family stocks were exhausted, 99 and he who emptied his granaries in time of famine and disater, 100 and he who took upon himself the cost of war, the equipment and the victualling of the troops. And the expenses of each dignitary, in his degree, had to cover not only his own living, but that of his followers as well as the reception of travellers and the feeding of poor people. 101 The wealth of the powerful blossomed out in luxury, but to a large extent the obligations of their office brought about its redistribution.

  This was not the case with the traders. As we have seen, the pochteca made no display of their wealth, except on the rare occasions when custom and propriety required them to be generous hosts. They had no position to keep up, and they did not redistribute their fortune. This wealth was derived neither from land nor from the taxes but from trade, of which they had the monopoly: it piled up, carefully concealed, in their warehouses, in the form of bundles of precious feathers, chests of green stones and amber, calabashes filled with gold-dust.

  Whereas the ruling class spent lavishly, the pochteca, leading their comfortable but unspectacular lives, did not have to provide for any needs but their own; they were not called upon to help the common people or the poor, and they were able to accumulate what one now terms capital. The dignitaries, after all, were only high officials who received important grants or salaries but who were obliged

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  to spend by far the greater part merely because of their position: but the traders, on the other hand, formed the primary nucleus of a wealthy class whose fortune was essentially personal.

  In the Aztec society of the beginning of the sixteenth century many widely differing standards of living were to be found -- the brilliant luxury of the sovereign, and that of the dignitaries in their various degrees, the middle-class comfort of the traders and the frugality of the common people. The poor are too often mentioned in literature for it to be possible to ignore their importance: the happy mediocrity which had been the lot of all Mexicans two centuries earlier was vanishing little by little, as the tribal village grew into the capital of an empire and became the centre towards which all the wealth of a vast country converged. Urban life, the increasing complexity of functions, the increase of the dominions and the accompanying task of administration, and the emergence of commerce all ineluctably and irremediably changed the ancient ways. No doubt the calpulli with its democratic organisation must have acted as a powerful stabiliser; but it is equally probable that the little plot of ground that had seemed quite enough to the plain citizen of the fourteenth century appeared wretchedly meagre to the man of the sixteenth. For here too an evolution was beginning, whose development we can only imagine, seeing that it was savagely broken by the European invasion.

  THE SOVEREIGN, THE GREAT DIGNITARIES, THE COUNCIL

  At the summit, at once the leader in war and the giver of rewards, the representative of the privileged classes and the protector of the common people, the sovereign upheld the rule of the governing class, alternately conciliating and repressing that of the merchants. He was attended by all the outward show of monarchical power, and this show corresponded exactly to the reality: nothing is more futile than the attempts of certain modern authors 102 to deny the evidence of this.

  Although the conquistadores may have been uncultivated men, they were excellent observers, and their descriptions

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  are clear; besides, they agree with the native sources, which carefully trace back the genealogy, the coronation and the death of each ruler. One is compelled to recognise the fact that the Mexican city of 1519 was a monarchy: but it remains to be decided what kind of a monarchy it was. Who was the monarch, and how was he appointed?

  The Mexican whom we call the emperor was there entitled the tlatoani, 'he who speaks', from the verb tlatoa, 'to speak': the same root is found in words relating to speech, for example tlatolli, 'language', and to power or authority, such as tlatocayotl, 'state'; and the two senses come together in the word tlatocan, which means the supreme council, the speaking-place and the place from which power emanates. The name tlatoani was not given to the ruler by mere chance, for the basis of his power was the art of speaking, of speaking well in the discussions in council and of making with ease and dignity those high-flown, figurative speeches that the Aztecs liked so much. His other title was that of tlacatecuhtli, 'chief of the warriors', which referred to a very important aspect of his office -- he was the commanderin-chief of the armies of the three confederated cities.

  The origins of the Mexican dynasty are obscure, and this obscurity was rendered the darker by the attempts of the Aztec chroniclers at supplying their ruling house with a noble pedigree. They felt obliged to make it appear that the dynasty descended from the great and legendary Toltec kings, although it was in reality a house that had come but lately on the scene. This end was reached by taking a turn through Colhuacán, the take city of the south where the customs and the language of Tula had persisted: it was quite essential that the first Aztec emperor, Acamapichtli, should be a native of this town, and thus a Toltec; and in order to prove it there were a great many complicated accounts of his rise to power. One of these versions, a particularly interesting one in that it was drawn up after the Spanish conquest by order of the conquistador Juan Cano, who had married doña Isabel, the daughter of Motecuhzoma II, no doubt gives us the official story.

  This Relación 103 expressly states that the lords of Colhuacán

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  descended from Quetzalcoatl, the 'plumed serpent', king of Tula, and that Acamapichtli was the adopted son of the last legitimate lord of this family. According to another source, 104 Acamapichtli was born at Colhuacán, although his mother was a Mexican. But another woman plays a very important, though somewhat obscure, Rôle in the founding of the dynasty: sometimes she appears as the young king's mother by adoption, sometimes as his wife; but always as a señora of great Colhuacán family. There is more than one pointer to show that in former times both nobility and power were inherited through women. But however that may be, the link by which they tried to join the Mexican royal family to a glorious and mythical past was an exceedingly frail one.

  After Acamapichtli the turquoise diadem stayed in the family without a break until the end: the second emperor, Uitziliuitl, was his son, and the third, Chimalpopoca, his grandson. After that the power was often inherited by the brother of the late sovereign, or his nephew. The different sources do not always agree as to the exact relationship between the successive emperors, 105 but one point remains upon which there is no possible doubt -- the descent is always in one family: it is one single dynasty.

  Custom could vary from one town to another: at Texcoco, for example, there was a regular father-to-son descent. But it was still necessary to decide which son should have the throne, and this was not easy in the case of polygamous rulers. It was conceded that one of the king's wives was the 'legitimate' wife, and in theory it was her eldest son who succeeded his father. 106 Yet there was still a considerable amount of room for uncertainty, for, as Zurita says, 'if none of his sons or grandsons was fit to rule, no successor was proclaimed, but the chief lords set about electing one.' 107 For this reason Nezaualcoyotl, before his death, took the precaution of appointi
ng his seven-year-old son Nezaualpilli as his successor, 108 and having him acknowledged king, in the same way that the Roman and Byzantine emperors made their sons associates in the empire to assure them of the crown.

  At Mexico, election was customary. Acamapichtli did not

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  name his successor at the time of his death, 'but left the republic the task of electing whoever appeared most fit . . . This custom has always been preserved among the Mexicans. The sons of the kings have not ruled by right of inheritance, but by election.' 109 In the beginning it was the whole nation, or at least the heads of families, who appointed the sovereign: the city was still small, and the inhabitants few; they could all be brought together in the central square to ratify the suggestions of the leaders by acclamation.

  As the city and the empire grew larger, so the body that elected the sovereign grew smaller: it was not the people but 'the senate' who named Auitzotl. 110 At the beginning of the sixteenth century the electoral college was composed of abouta hundred persons, divided into five categories: the tecuhtlatoque or supreme dignitaries, who numbered thirteen; the achcacauhtin, officials of the second rank who represented, or who were supposed to represent, the various districts; two military categories, the one serving and the other retired; and then the most important priests, the tlenamacazque. 111 As it will be seen, this college represented only the higher level of the ruling class of officials, priests and warriors: not only were the slaves excluded, of course, and not only the people, but the traders, the craftsmen and even the 'nobles' -- the pilli. The election of the emperor was, therefore, in the hands of a narrow oligarchy.

  Sahagún states that there was no poll. It is the same even now, in the Nahuatl villages of Mexico, when a municipal official or the head of a confraternity is to be chosen: the electors discuss it among themselves, suggestions are put up, and they agree upon a name. There is no voting, no ballot, as we understand it. When he was proclaimed, the new sovereign had to go through the long and trying ceremonies of the coronation: in the course of them he was obliged to do penance before the gods, listen to many harangues and reply to them by eloquent speeches. 112 Finally he addressed the people, exhorting them above all to venerate the gods and flee drunkenness. He then appeared in all the splendour of the imperial robes, with a triangular diadem of gold and turquoises on his forehead, wearing a