Encomienda facts for kids
The encomienda was a system used by the Spanish in their colonies. It rewarded Spanish conquerors with the labor of people they had conquered. These workers were usually non-Christian native peoples. In return, the conquerors were supposed to protect and educate the workers. They were also meant to teach them about Catholicism.
This system first started in Spain. It was used after Christians took back lands from the Moors. This period was called the Reconquista. The encomienda system was then used much more widely in the Spanish colonization of the Americas and the Spanish East Indies.
The conquered people were seen as subjects of the Spanish monarch. The Crown gave an encomienda as a special grant to an individual. In the early 1500s, these grants meant a person had a monopoly on the labor of certain indigenous peoples. This right was supposed to last forever for the grant holder, called the encomendero. However, after the New Laws of 1542, the encomienda ended when the encomendero died. It was then replaced by a system called the repartimiento.
The encomienda system often became a form of forced labor. The Spanish Crown gave an encomendero a certain number of native people from a community. But it did not say which specific individuals had to work. Native leaders were responsible for organizing the required labor and tributes. In return, encomenderos were meant to teach the natives about Catholicism and the Spanish language. They were also supposed to protect them from other tribes or pirates. They had to stop any rebellions against the Spanish and keep infrastructure working. The natives gave tributes like metals, maize, wheat, pork, and other farm products.
After Christopher Columbus was removed in 1500, the Spanish Crown sent Francisco de Bobadilla. He was followed by a royal governor, Fray Nicolás de Ovando. Ovando set up the formal encomienda system. Often, native people were forced to do very hard work. They faced harsh punishments and even death if they resisted. However, Queen Isabella I of Castile said that native people could not be enslaved. She declared them "free subjects of the crown." Various versions of the Laws of the Indies, starting in 1512, tried to control how settlers and natives interacted. Both natives and Spaniards could ask the Real Audiencias (royal courts) for help under the encomienda system.
Sometimes, encomiendas led to people being moved from their homes and families being broken up. But in New Spain (Mexico), the encomienda system usually worked through existing native community leaders. The native people often stayed in their settlements with their families.
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What is the History of the Encomienda?
The words encomienda and encomendero come from the Spanish verb encomendar, which means "to entrust." The encomienda system was based on an older system from the reconquista. In that system, military leaders called adelantados could collect tributes from Muslims or other farmers in lands they had conquered.
The encomienda system came to America because Spanish law was put in place there. This system was created in the Middle Ages. It was important for repopulating and protecting border lands during the reconquista. It started in the Catholic south of Spain to get labor and tributes from Muslims (Moors). This happened before the Moors were exiled in 1492, after their defeat in the Granada War. The system was a way to reward soldiers and people who funded the fight against the Moors.
The encomienda created a relationship similar to Feudalism. In this system, military protection was given in exchange for tributes or specific work. It was especially common among military groups who protected frontier areas. The king usually played a role, directly or indirectly. He made sure the agreement was fair and would send military help if there was abuse.
The encomienda system in Spanish America was different from the one in Spain. The encomenderos did not own the land where the native people lived. The system did not give the encomendero direct ownership of land. Native lands were supposed to stay with their communities. The Spanish Crown formally protected this right. This was because the rights to manage the New World belonged to the Crown of Castile.
Who Were the Encomenderos?
The first people to receive encomienda grants were called encomenderos. They were usually conquerors who got these labor grants for helping in a successful conquest. Later, some people who received encomiendas in New Spain (Mexico) were not conquerors themselves. They got grants because they had good connections.
Robert Himmerich y Valencia studied the encomenderos of early colonial Mexico. He divided conquerors into "first conquerors" (those with Hernán Cortés' original group) and "conquerors" (those from the later Pánfilo de Narváez expedition). Himmerich also identified a group called pobladores antiguos (old settlers). These were encomenderos in New Spain who had lived in the Caribbean region before the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire.
In the New World, the Crown gave conquistadores the right to be encomendero. This meant they could get labor and tributes from native people under Spanish rule. Columbus started the encomienda system after he arrived on the island of Hispaniola. He made natives pay tributes or face harsh punishments. Tributes had to be paid in gold, but gold was hard to find at that time.
Some women and some native leaders also became encomenderos. Maria Jaramillo, the daughter of La Malinche and Juan Jaramillo, received income from her deceased father's encomiendas. Two of Moctezuma's daughters, Isabel Moctezuma and Leonor Moctezuma, were given large encomiendas forever by Hernán Cortés. Leonor Moctezuma married two Spanish men. She left her encomiendas to her daughter from her second husband. Native Inca rulers appointed after the conquest also asked for and received encomiendas.
The encomienda was very important for the Spanish Crown to keep control over North, Central, and South America. This was especially true in the first decades after colonization. It was the first major organizational law put in place on the continent. This was a time of war, widespread disease, and great confusion. At first, the encomienda system was designed for the early farming economies in the Caribbean. Later, it was adapted for the mining economy of Peru. The encomienda system lasted from the early 1500s to the 1600s.
King Philip II passed a law on June 11, 1594, to set up the encomienda in the Philippines. He gave grants to local nobles. They used the encomienda to gain ownership of large areas of land. Many of these lands, like Makati, are still owned by wealthy families today.
How Was the Encomienda System Established?
In 1501, Isabella I of Castile declared Native Americans to be subjects of the Crown. This meant they were legally equal to Spanish Castilians. This made it illegal to enslave them, except in very specific situations. It also allowed the encomiendas to be set up. This is because the encomienda bond was a right only for full subjects of the crown. In 1503, the Crown began to officially grant encomiendas to conquerors and officials. These were rewards for their service to the Crown.
The encomienda system was helped by the Crown organizing native people into small settlements called reducciones. The goal was to create new towns and populations. Each reducción had a native chief. This chief was responsible for keeping track of the workers in his community. The encomienda system did not give people land directly. However, it did help settlers get land indirectly.
At first, the encomendero and his family were expected to hold these grants forever. But after a big Crown reform in 1542, called the New Laws, encomendero families could only hold the grant for two generations. When the Crown tried to put this policy into action in Peru, shortly after the 1535 Spanish conquest, Spanish recipients rebelled. They killed the viceroy, Blasco Núñez Vela.
In Mexico, viceroy Antonio de Mendoza decided not to put the reform into practice. He said it was because of local conditions and the risk of a similar rebellion. He told the Crown, "I obey crown authority but do not comply with this order." The encomienda system was legally ended in 1720. At that time, the Crown tried to get rid of the system completely. The encomenderos then had to pay the remaining encomienda workers for their labor.
The encomiendas became very unfair and harsh. In one area north of Santo Domingo, the adelantado (military leader) heard rumors of a large army planning a rebellion. When he heard this, the adelantado captured the native chiefs involved. Most of them were executed.
Later, a chief named Guarionex caused trouble in the countryside. An army of about 3,090 Spanish soldiers defeated the Ciguana people under his leadership. The islanders expected Spanish protection from warring tribes. They wanted to join the Spanish forces. They helped the Spaniards because the Spanish did not know much about the local environment.
As mentioned, the rule that encomiendas should return to the Crown after two generations was often ignored. The colonists did not want to give up the labor or power. The Codice Osuna, an ancient manuscript with native pictures and text in Nahuatl, shows that native people knew the difference. They knew which communities were controlled by individual encomenderos and which were controlled by the Crown.
How Was the Encomienda System Changed and Ended?
The New Laws of 1542
When news of the harsh conditions and abuse reached Spain, the New Laws were passed. These laws aimed to control and slowly end the encomienda system in America. They also repeated the rule that it was forbidden to enslave Native Americans. By the time the new laws were passed in 1542, the Spanish Crown knew it was hard to control and enforce laws overseas. So, they gave Native Americans special protections that even Spaniards did not have. For example, it was forbidden to enslave them even if they committed a crime or during war. These extra protections tried to stop illegal claims to slavery.
The new viceroy, Blasco Núñez Vela, freed thousands of Native Americans held in forced labor. This happened across the Spanish empire as he traveled to Peru. This act led to his murder and a conflict between the encomenderos and the Spanish Crown. The conflict ended with the execution of the encomenderos involved.
Final End of the System
In most Spanish territories gained in the 1500s, the encomienda system only lasted a few decades. However, in Peru and New Spain, the encomienda lasted much longer.
In the Chiloé Archipelago in southern Chile, the encomienda had been so abusive that it caused a revolt in 1712. The encomienda was ended there in 1782. In the rest of Chile, it was ended in 1789. It was finally abolished in the entire Spanish empire in 1791.
What Replaced the Encomienda?
The encomienda system was generally replaced by the repartimiento system. This new system was managed by the Crown. It was used throughout Spanish America after the mid-1500s. Like the encomienda, the new repartimiento did not give land to anyone. It only assigned native workers. But these workers were directly assigned to the Crown. A local Crown official would then assign them to work for settlers for a set period, usually several weeks. The repartimiento was an attempt "to reduce the abuses of forced labor."
As the number of native people decreased and farming became more important than mining in the 1600s, the hacienda system grew. A hacienda was a large estate where workers were directly employed by the owners. Land ownership became more profitable than getting forced labor.
What Were the Effects of the Encomienda System?
Many historians believe the encomienda system led to a huge decline in the native population. This was due to forced labor, harsh conditions, and the spread of diseases.
Raphael Lemkin, who created the term genocide, believed Spain's treatment of native people in the Americas was a form of cultural and even outright genocide. This included the abuses of the encomienda system. He said forced labor was "cultural genocide at its worst." He noted it was a very effective way to destroy culture and human connections.
Economic historian Timothy J. Yeager argued the encomienda was more deadly than traditional slavery. This was because a worker's life was seen as disposable. If one worker died, they could simply be replaced by another from the same land. Historian David Stannard described the encomienda as a genocidal system. He said it "had driven many millions of native peoples in Central and South America to early and agonizing deaths."
Yale University's genocide studies program supports this view regarding abuses in Hispaniola. The program points to the sharp decline of the Taíno population of Hispaniola from 1492 to 1514 as an example of genocide. The native population dropped from between 100,000 and 1,000,000 to only 32,000. This was a decline of 68% to over 96%. Historian Andrés Reséndez believes that forced labor in gold and silver mines was the main reason for this huge drop. The conditions native people faced, like forced relocation and long hours of hard labor, helped diseases spread. For example, anthropologist Jason Hickel states that a third of Arawak workers died every six months from forced labor in the mines.
Different Views on Accusations of Genocide
Some historians are skeptical about the accusations of genocide linked to the encomienda and the Spanish conquest. They argue that these accusations are part of the Spanish Black Legend. This "Black Legend" is a historical idea that paints Spain in a very negative light.
Noble David Cook, writing about the Black Legend and the conquest of the Americas, said: "There were too few Spaniards to have killed the millions who were reported to have died in the first century after Old and New World contact." He suggests that the near total destruction of the native population of Hispaniola was mostly caused by diseases like smallpox. He argues that the Spanish unknowingly brought these diseases to the New World.
See also
In Spanish: Encomienda para niños
- Cargo system
- Encomiendas in Peru
- Gregorio de San Juan
- Historiography of Colonial Spanish America
- Jesuit reductions
- Reductions
- Serfdom
- Guaraní people
