Mesoamerican Tribute Records

The Mesoamerican Tribute Records contain 33 sheets of pictorial tribute records from the viceroyality of New Spain. They were painted around the mid-sixteenth century on long strips (tiras) of amatl, a sophisticated fig-bark paper made from the amate tree in Mesoamerica by native papermakers. The authors were Indigenous painter-scribes (tlacuiloque) from various towns of the Basin of Mexico, including Culhuacan, Mexico-Tenochtitlan, Papalotla, and the Acolhuacan. Most of them are fragments that used to be part of longer strips, ranging in size. They belong to the genre of tequiamatl (from the Nahuatl words tequitl: tribute, task, and amatl: paper) and are pictorial tribute and accounting books. These strips feature a visual record of the tributes paid by individuals and towns to the Spanish administration such as Spanish coins (pesos, tomines), cacao pods, food, clothes, and labor. The items, services rendered, and names of those who provided them are registered in visual form. A few place names or toponyms indicate the town where the tribute records were made, although not all the strips have them. There is virtually no text, except for a few glosses in Nahuatl, all information is conveyed pictorially, as is traditional in Mesoamerican codices.

Description by Ana Pulido Rull, Ph.D., Short-Term Fellow, Helmerich Center for American Research, March 2026.