Economy

Tribute and Trade

• The triple alliance was extracted tributes from subject peoples. The Aztecs and their allies received food crops and manufactured items such as textiles, rabbit fur blankets, embroidered cloths, jewelry, and obsidian knives.

• Ruling elites entrusted some of these tribute items to Aztec merchants, who took them to distant lands and exchanged them for local products. These included luxury items such as jade, emeralds, tortoise shells, jaguar skins, parrot feathers, seashells, and game animals. The tropical lowlands also supplied vanilla beans and cacao.

Agriculture

• Lake Texcoco allowed the Aztecs to develop the chinampa system of agriculture: the Aztecs built a rich and fertile muck from the lake onto small plots of land known as chinampas.

• During the dry season they tapped water from canals leading from the lake to their plots, and in the temperate climate, they grew maize, beans, squashes, tomatoes, peppers, and chiles year- round.