Indian Commercial Response to the Conquest
The agents of the Seville trading houses who followed the conquistadors into the heart of the Aztec Empire encountered a commercially oriented polity whose towns and trade routes rivaled what they knew at home. The supreme market was Tlatelolco, adjoining Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital, to the north. It dazzled the first settlers by its size, order, and display of marvelous and useful goods. But every altepetl (city-state) had its central market surrounded by a ring of village markets that alternated selling days among them. Aztec roads and footpaths traced out the routes along which were sent the ceramics, feathered costumes, obsidian-tipped knives, and algae snacks of Tenochtitlan southwards to the warmer regions along the Pacific, to the Valleys of Morelos and Oaxaca, or to the Gulf coasts. In return, the subordinate regions sent back cotton, cacao, unworked precious feathers, and jade either by means of private sales or, more likely, as tribute payment.

One of the central questions in the historiography of New Spain is how the Indians responded to the efforts of the Spaniards to exploit them economically yet incorporate them as Christian subjects into a new colonial society. To what extent did Indians who were hardy enough to survive the disastrous epidemics of the 1520s and 1540s retain their own way of life, which, as we have seen, included a strong interest in artisan production and trade? As in other areas in the first half of the sixteenth century the Spaniards tried to establish two parallel trading systems. Indians could sell their eggs, wax, maize, and honey to the Spaniards for personal consumption, but the Spaniards were usually not allowed to resell these goods. The Crown excluded the Africans and the mixed-race groups that soon emerged from trading in Indian products. For their part, Indians were not supposed to use Spanish goods for trade, but, except for wine, they could buy Spanish cloth or household wares for their own use.

Not surprisingly, the Spanish government could not maintain parallel trading systems. Both Indians and Spaniards actively trafficked in "each other's" products. In 1551, the goods for sale at the Indian market of Coyoacán included: rabbit hair and feathers for fancywear; clay vessels, obsidian blades and tumplines (forehead straps used by Indian porters); but also Spanish collars, shirts and candles. The Mixtecs and Zapotecs of Oaxaca wove silken thread and forged iron tools, and their nobility enjoyed wearing Spanish capes. All levels of central Mexican Indian society adopted Spanish money.