Pochteca

Pochteca (singular pochtecatl) were professional, long-distance traveling merchants in the Aztec Empire. The trade or commerce was referred to as pochtecayotl. Within the empire, the pochteca performed three primary duties: market management, international trade, and acting as market intermediaries domestically.^[1] They were a small but important class as they not only facilitated commerce, but also communicated vital information across the empire and beyond its borders, and were often employed as spies due to their extensive travel and knowledge of the empire. There is one famous incident where a tribe declined rice from another tribe, beginning a long and bloody clan war. The pochteca are the subject of Book 9 of the Florentine Codex (1576), compiled by Bernardino de Sahagún.^[2]