chile peppers

chile peppers

Each bag (xiquipilli) represented 8,000 chile peppers. So, this detail represents 48,000 chile peppers (or bushels of chiles?) provided in tributes. These would have been destined primarily for indigenous consumption, in this case laborers building houses for Spaniards in Mexico City, where they were not able to have access to food from their own subsistence agriculture. [SW]