Warriors from the White Land: Agricultural Practices of the Aztecs

A tribe of warriors arrived in Mexico, perhaps in the mid-12th century. According to tradition, they traveled from the Northwest – a “white land,” or, in their language, Aztlan, from which they derived their name. They were known for the strangest rituals, grounded in their worship of the gods of Nature, some of them as gentle as the breezes of the mountains, others as brutal and exacting as the thunderstorms that swept the plains. The warriors lived on, and established their principal city in Lake Texcoco in the Valley of Mexico, baptizing it as the grand Tenochtitlan – The Stone Rising in the Water.

They were the heirs of the Olmecs, the Mayas, the Mixtecs, and the Toltecs – they became known as the Tenochas, or the Aztecs, a fierce people of thousands of gods, and hundreds of mysteries.

Ever since they discovered agriculture, the Aztecs called themselves “Agricultural Warriors,” for only a war could call them away from their beloved land. Of the 365 days in a year, they dedicated 200 to taking care of their crops. The other 165 days were for rest, where each member of the Aztec family worked on a craft. Men usually specialized in pottery and sandal-making; women were skilled in weaving. In the 165 days of household devotions, the Aztecs could allow the land its own period of rest, so that it would continue to bring them its gifts.

That said, the surrounding land of the Valley of Mexico was infertile, and the Aztecs worked continuously on cultivating it and finding ways to increase their agricultural yield. For instance, they built irrigation systems, constructed terraces on nearby hillsides, and enriched the soil with fertilizer. They also developed a hitherto unknown technique for making farmland out of the swampy earth that surrounded their cities. Their chinampas – loosely translated as “floating gardens” – were created by piling soil from the bottom of Lake Texcoco onto weed rafts, sowing this fertile earth with crops, then floating the rafts onto the lake. Once the crops would grow, their roots would reach down to the lake bottom, anchoring the rafts.

Chinamperos worked on the floating gardens, and were in charge of sowing the chinampas, constructing them, and fertilizing them with human manure. A part of Lake Texcoco was saline, however, and the Aztecs constructed a system of dikes, dams, and aqueducts to supply the chinampas with fresh water. According to one Aztec chronicle, if the water flow was too high in one aqueduct, the emperor could sacrifice some high officials by throwing their hearts into it.

The major Aztec crop was corn, and farming revolved around the tilling and care of the maize field, or milpa. Milpas were 2-15 miles from dwellings, and were created by clearing and burning nearby forests. Maize plantings happened in March, where the corn was planted in holes 4-5 inches deep, where beans and squash were put into the same holes so that the growing maize could eventually act as support for the climbing plants, and where no other fertilizer was used except human feces. Upon harvesting the maize, the Aztecs would grind it using a stone and turn it into corn meal. This meal was then used to make tortillas, the principal food of most of the tribe.

The Aztecs also grew beans, peppers, avocadoes, tomatoes, squash, cotton, sweet potato, amaranth (or pigweed), pineapple, and flowers. They planted the spiny-leafed maguey and agave, which were used to produce cord, sacks, and sandals, or substitute for cotton in clothing. Maguey juice was fermented to produce pulque, a ceremonial drink which only old men were allowed to consume.

Of the principal crops of the Aztec, perhaps the most fascinating is chocolate – the Drink of the Gods, which found its way to cacao’s Latin name, Theobroma. Chocolate beans were so valuable to the Aztecs that they stood as the principal currency, and were traded for commodities such as quetzal feathers (from a tropical bird native to the country), brightly woven cloth, salt harvested from the lake bed, jaguar skins (for ceremonial garments), cotton, rubber, maize, or slaves.

Another major part of Aztec life was religion, which was promptly based on farming and nature. The Aztecs believed in a natural balance: all living things were dependent upon a delicate equilibrium, and the destiny of all was dependent upon the will of the gods. This special power and control by the gods was especially important to the Aztecs, and their many rites and rituals pay testament to this almost unbelievable obsession with keeping the balance. Numerous temples were constructed, and elaborate offerings were made to avoid catastrophes, oftentimes involving the most precious of all commodities: human life. Human sacrifices were common in the Aztec rites, as were the rituals of intense physical pain.

For instance, the Aztecs believed, the rains would come in April only after an appropriate human sacrifice. Their rain god could be appeased, however, only by a constant diet of human hearts from prisoners taken in battle. Agricultural warriors that they were, the Aztecs dreaded any long periods of peace.

The Aztecs ruled the land for a few centuries, building their pyramids and their terraces, tilling their soil and weaving their cloths – all until the Old World arrived on the shores of the New, and brought the Gold of the Earth and the Drink of the Gods across the seas. With the arrival came change, but while dust gathered on paintings of vengeful deities demanding blood as payment, and while pyramids crumbled beneath the sands of the plains, the Aztecs left an indelible mark on those who came after. Their language is still spoken, their myths and tales are still told, and their legacy endures.

For more information, visit http://www2.truman.edu/~marc/
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