Tlameme (porter)

A tlameme was a professional porter in the Nahuatl-speaking world of central Mexico. The word comes from the Nahuatl verb for carrying a load on the back, and Spanish took it over as tameme. Modern writing spells it several ways, including tlamama, with tlamemeh as a plural. Porters carried with a mecapal, a tumpline: a strap across the forehead tied to the load on the back, often fixed to a wooden carrying frame.

Mesoamerica had no large draft animals and did not use wheeled vehicles for transport. On the lakes and rivers, canoes carried heavy traffic. Everywhere else, everything moved on foot: trade goods, tribute, building materials and the supplies of armies. Carrying was a recognised occupation, and long-distance merchants travelled with porters.

When the Spanish expedition marched inland in 1519, it depended on the same system. Bernal Díaz reports that two hundred carriers left Cempoala with the column in August 1519 and that they carried the artillery. That figure comes from one retrospective account and covers one departure. After the conquest, Spanish colonists used Indigenous porters heavily, and colonial authorities issued rules limiting their loads and distances.

The tumpline put much of the weight on the head and neck, with the back and the frame spreading the rest. The carrier leaned forward into the load and walked.

Ross Hassig's study of transport in the Valley of Mexico, built on colonial records, gives a standard load of about 23 kilograms and a day's stage of roughly 21 to 28 kilometres. Those are working figures from sixteenth-century evidence, not a fixed rule, and real loads varied. On long routes, goods moved in stages from one group of carriers to the next.

• The Road to Tenochtitlán, 1519. The episode shows porters under tumplines and keeps Bernal Díaz's figure of two hundred carriers tied to the single departure it describes.