The TLaTOani in TenochTiTlan • 55Tochtepec and its surrounding towns were called upon to
produce a wealth of exotic goods, many made from raw
materials that did not exist in the cool, high-altitude Valley
of Mexico. Most of the goods on the page were destined
for ritual use: in the second register from the bottom is
the ceramic pot holding the liquidambar used as incense,
and on the center right edge are two balls of rubber, used
in painting the deities and their impersonators as well as
in the ballgame. But most importantly, the page is domi-
nated by feathers: finished products made of feathers,
like shields, backracks, and suits, in the upper third. On
the lower left part of the page are the bundles of feathers
required as tribute, and the quantities are staggering: eight
thousand turquoise feathers, eight thousand scarlet feath-
ers, eight thousand green feathers. The source for the most
valuable of these feathers, whose color echoes the precious
jade necklaces that appear above them, is also pictured, in
the upper left quadrant of the page: it is a backrack in the
form of the male quetzal bird. The bird’s long tail feathers
were particularly prized, so much so that the native writers
of the Florentine Codex would wax eloquent about the
“glowing, shimmering” of these feathers. 5
Trapped and shot down with blowguns by the Maya
and others in Guatemala and Costa Rica, the birds would
yield feathers that were carefully sorted and bundled, as
pictured here, then sold to long-distance traders or to
neighboring regions to use for the finished tribute goods.
These precious cargos of feathers were carried by tameme
(from Nahuatl tlamama, “someone who bears a load”) fol-
lowing the routes and roadways that connected south to
north, and they eventually threaded their way through
mountain passes to the high Valley of Mexico to enter
Tenochtitlan by canoe or causeway. 6 Sold in the markets
of Tenochtitlan 7 or ushered into the workshops of the
city’s featherworkers to be made into ritual paraphernalia,
feathers were exotic goods. They were expressly marked
and known as the products of the peripheral conquests
of the empire—the Florentine Codex authors tell us, for
instance, that the prized quetzal feathers arrived in the
time of Moteuczoma I, specifically linking the appearance
of these feathers to a round of fifteenth-century imperial
expansion. 8
Feathers were thus part of a spatial imaginary, that is,
one of the ways that distant space found expression before
the eyes of residents of the pre-Hispanic city. Not only
were they exotic—not from the cool, high-altitude val-
ley—but also acquiring them was a goal and an outcome
of the Mexica military forays to the regions outside of
the valley. Feathers, more than any flat image like a map,
were the physical evidence of the expanse of an empire,
made possible by the military prowess of its ruler. And
feathered costumes brought to the center as part of this
imperial booty were worn, in turn, by the armies that
marched out of Tenochtitlan to extend the empire, or to
subdue any rebellions within. 9 Thus the feathers worn by
the ruler allowed him to represent on his person the spa-
tial expanse of the conquered empire and his role in that
expansion. Not only a vivid complement to the rather static
iconography of conquest found in other sculptural works,
they also allowed geographic peripheries to be brought to
the center. 10
Feathers also formed an important part of the ruler’s
battle dress, as known from painted manuscripts created
after the Conquest. One exquisite rendering of a ruler in
such battle dress is to be found in the Codex Ixtlilxochitl,
in which a great Tetzcocan ruler, Nezahualcoyotl, appears
in battle pose (figure 3.2). 11 As presented here, the Tetzco-
can ruler wears the suit of feathers and carries feathered
accouterments that only highest-status warriors would
be eligible to wear and carry: a close-fitting jerkin (called
an ehuatl, meaning “skin” or “husk”) covers his body, this
version made for rulers and created out of rich turquoise
feathers. His kilt is also made of feathers—long pink and
yellow plumes are bordered at top and bottom by shorter
green feathers. Flame-colored orange-red feathers are on
the lower borders of his shield, carried on his left arm,
while his right hand holds the obsidian-bladed macuahuitl,
deadly in combat at close quarters. (Given the position of
right and left hands and feet, we are to read the body as
opening away from us, but the easy naturalism is slightly
marred by the artist’s positioning of Nezahualcoyotl’s right
foot low down in the picture plane, whereas one-point per-
spective would call for it to be higher up.) He appears as if
shifting his weight as he makes ready to strike an unseen
opponent with a crushing overhead blow by the macua-
huitl—the portrait thus reinforcing Nezahualcoyotl’s sta-
tus as a warrior, fully appropriate for the Acolhua leader
who helped forge the Triple Alliance. On his tour of valley
cities after the successful war waged against Tehuantepec
in the Isthmus of Mexico, the Mexica ruler Ahuitzotl was
connected to the successful conquest of outlying territories
by the elaborate feather costumes he wore along with his
courtiers. Additionally, dwarfs in the retinue carried “skins
of jaguars and ocelots that had been brought back from the