20 An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States
Aztecs emerged as dominant in the Triple Alliance and moved to
bring all the peoples of Mexico under their tributary authority.
These events paralleled ones in Europe and Asia during the same
period, when Rome and other city-states were demolished and occu
pied by invading Germanic peoples, while the Mongols of the Eur
asian steppe overran much of Russia and China. As in Europe and
Asia, the invading peoples assimilated and reproduced civilization.
The economic basis for the powerful Aztec state was hydraulic
agriculture, with corn as the central crop. Beans, pumpkins, toma
toes, cocoa, and many other food crops flourished and supported a
dense population, much of it concentrated in large urban centers.
The Aztecs also grew tobacco and cotton, the latter providing the
fiber for all cloth and clothing. Weaving and metalwork flourished,
providing useful commodities as well as works of art. Building tech
niques enabled construction of enormous stone dams and canals,
as well as fortress-like castles made of brick or stone. There were
elaborate markets in each city and a far-flung trade network that
used routes established by the Toltecs.
Aztec merchants acquired turquoise from Pueblos who mined
it in what is now the US Southwest to sell in central Mexico where
it had become the most valued of all material possessions and
was used as a means of exchange or a form of money. 5 Sixty-five
thousand turquoise artifacts in Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, are
evidence of the importance of turquoise as a major precolonial com
modity. Other items were also valuable marketable commodities in
the area, salt being close to turquoise in value. Ceramic trade goods
involved interconnected markets from Mexico City to Mesa Verde,
Colorado. Shells from the Gulf of California, tropical bird feath
ers from the Gulf Coast area of Mexico, obsidian from Durango,
Mexico, and flint from Texas were all found in the ruins of Casa
Grande (Arizona), the commercial center of the northern frontier.
Tu rquoise functioning as money was traded to acquire macaw and
parrot fe athers from tropical areas for religious rituals, seashells
from coastal peoples, and hides and meat from the northern plains.
The stone has been found in precolonial sites in Texas, Kansas, and
Nebraska, where the Wichitas served as intermediaries, carrying
turquoise and other goods farther east and north. Crees in the Lake