The Fabric of the Kingdom Available to Purchase

Chapter 3 considers the making of imperial tribute through a material history of Indigenous textiles. The Muisca peoples who lived in the plateaus in the northern Andes had a rich textile industry best represented by their mantas—square, hand-painted cloths woven out of cotton. After the conquest, mantas became the primary good for colonial tribute and one of the driving forces of the colonial economy under the encomienda system. I argue that the transfer of mantas was crucial in the making of common systems of meaning and exchange between Native peoples and Spaniards in the northern Andes.