Tribute
Goods or labor that a people owed to the lords who ruled them, such as cloaks, food and firewood in Mexico before the Spanish conquest and cloth or money to the Spanish Crown after it.
Teotihuacan Answers the King
The elders of San Juan Teotihuacan, answers to the king's questionnaire, recorded by the corregidor Francisco de Castañeda, March 1, 1580 · March 1, 1580 (customs remembered from before the Spanish conquest of 1521)
En tienpo de su gentilidad fueron gente y republica sobre si, sin reconocer a nadie sino a sus señores naturales que llamaban chichimecas, hasta que Nesagualcoyotzin, señor de Tescuco, tiranizo toda la comarca matando a los hijos de Tetzotzomoctli, señor de Escaputzalco a quien todos reconocian, por guerra, e despues de su muerte de Tetzotzomoctli el dicho Netzagualcoyotzi se hizo poderoso aliandose con Montesuma señor de Mexico; repartieron las tierras del pueblo de San Juan y Aculma entre si los sobredichos, a los quales los naturales del pueblo de San Juan daban en reconoçimiento cada ochenta dias: algunas mantas de nequen gruesas que llaman Ichtilmates y algunas cargas de pencas de maguey de esas que llaman metlontli.
Before they became Christians, they were a people and a state of their own. They recognized no one but their own lords, whom they called chichimecas. Then Nesagualcoyotzin, lord of Tescuco, seized the whole district by force, killing in war the sons of Tetzotzomoctli, lord of Escaputzalco, whom everyone had recognized. After Tetzotzomoctli's death, Netzagualcoyotzi grew powerful by allying himself with Montesuma, lord of Mexico. These two divided the lands of San Juan and Aculma between them. Every eighty days, as a sign that they were their lords, the people of San Juan gave them some coarse cloaks of nequen (maguey fiber), which they call ichtilmates, and some loads of maguey leaves of the kind they call metlontli.