Antonio de Espejo
In February 1583, Espejo arrived at the territory of the Piros, the most southerly of the Pueblo villagers. From there the Spanish continued up the Rio Grande. Espejo described the Pueblo villages as "clean and tidy". The houses were multi-storied and made of adode bricks. "They make very fine tortillas," Espejo commented, and the Pueblos also served the Spanish turkeys, beans, corns, and pumpkins. The people "did not seem to be bellicose". The southernmost Pueblos had only clubs for weapons plus a few "poor Turkish bows and poorer arrows". Further north, the Indians were better armed and more aggressive. Some of the Pueblo towns were large, Espejo described Zia as having 1,000 houses and 4,000 men and boys. In their farming, the Pueblos used irrigation "with canals and dams, built as if by Spaniards". The only Spanish influence that Espejo noted among the Pueblos was their desire for iron. They would steal any iron article they could find.
Aztec society
In the valleys of the empire, irrigation farming was used. Dams diverted water from natural springs to the fields. This allowed for more regular harvests because the prosperity of an irrigated field was not dependent upon the rain. Irrigation systems had been in place long before the Aztecs. However, they built canal systems that were longer and more elaborate than any previous irrigation systems. They even managed to divert a large portion of the Cuauhtitlan River to provide irrigation to large areas. The network of canals was very complex and intricate.