Epidemics, Slavery, Massacres, and Indigenous Resistance 1492-1599 1500-1542 Under Spain during this period, more than 2,500 Natives are shipped to the Iberian Peninsula as slaves. By the mid-1550s, Queen Isabella officially declares Indian slavery illegal, but it continues in Spanish colonies via the encomienda system, a communal slavery system. The Spanish Crown provides a grant (encomienda) to a Spanish colonizer (encomendero) stipulating access to Natives, who are expected to provide labor and tributes to the encomenderos. Encomenderos are also mandated through these grants to convert Natives to Christianity and endorse Spanish as their primary language. Native peoples are forced to engage in hard labor and subjected to torture, extreme abuse, and, in some cases, death if they resist (Nies, 1996). The encomienda system, because it was tied to indigeneity, helps facilitate intermarriage of Indigenous people with non-Indigenous spouses (e.g., Spaniards or Creoles) and sets the stage for the rise of the mestizaje caste system by the 1700s. Mixed-blood offspring cannot, by law, be subject to the encomienda communal slave system because they are mixed and no longer “Native.” Thus, the encomienda system lays the foundation for the uptake of a Mestizo identity and population and the relinquishment and renunciation of Indigenous identities (Nies, 1996).
ENCOMIENDA SYSTEM established social and racial relations as the basis for the economic and political order in the Spanish areas of the Americas. Derived from the Spanish verb encomendar (to entrust a mission for someone to fulfill), the mission of the encomienda was to care for and protect indigenous people by awarding part of their labor and produce to men who had served the crown—encomenderos. The encomendero was to indoctrinate his wards into the Catholic faith while acculturating them to European standards. In return, the encomendero was authorized to collect tribute and receive personal services from his wards. The encomienda had its roots in the Spanish Reconquista (reconquest) of the Iberian Peninsula from the eighth to the fifteenth centuries. After the conquest of Granada in 1492, the Spanish crown parceled out lands as encomiendas to soldiers who were, in turn, to Christianize the Moors. Then, in 1499, a former governor of Granada introduced the encomienda to Hispaniola in the Americas, and soon all the participants in the conquests of the Caribbean, Mexico, Central America, and South America expected an encomienda as reward for their services to the crown. For example, in Mexico in 1522, the conquistador Hernán Cortés directed that his encomenderos were to receive tribute and household services from the conquered Indians in their encomiendas in return for providing food, clothing, care, and religious instruction to the Indians. Women and boys under the age of twelve were exempt from personal service and Indians were only to serve for twenty days, with at least thirty days between service requirements. Royal fears of the encomenderos' feudal power and continuing conflict between groups of conquerors in Guatemala and particularly Peru, led to the end of personal service to the encomenderos in 1546 under the New Laws of the Indies. Encomenderos were still allowed to collect tribute from their grants but could pass them on only to the next generation. Population decline among the Indians in the later sixteenth century further weakened the encomienda by reducing the amount of Indian labor available, which prevented the encomienda from producing enough to satisfy the economic and social aspirations of the encomenderos. Encomiendas often became a trap for early settlers, resulting in a third generation reduced to penury. However, in some central areas of the Spanish empire, especially Mexico and Peru, an encomienda sometimes became the basis for a family fortune. Some encomenderos in these regions permitted the Indians of their encomienda to sell their produce in the market reduced by population decline, accepting instead the Indians' tribute in gold currency. Encomenderos then invested this capital in other enterprises, land above all, contributing to the rise of great estates in the seventeenth century. In peripheral parts of the empire such as Paraguay, Chile, and Colombia, the encomienda survived in some fashion until the end of the colonial period. In what is now the United States, in New Mexico, Juan de Oñate granted over sixty encomiendas to reward his men and provide for military defense around 1600. These far northern encomiendas did not survive the 1680 revolt of the Pueblo Indians. By helping to establish race and ethnicity as the primary determinants of economic and political power, the encomienda system had long-reaching effects in the history of the Americas. BIBLIOGRAPHYCalero, Luis F. Chiefdoms Under Siege: Spain's Rule and Native Adaptation in the Southern Colombian Andes, 1535–1700. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1997. Kramer, Wendy. Encomienda Politics in Early Colonial Guatemala, 1524–1544: Dividing the Spoils. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1994. Ramírez, Susan E. Provincial Patriarchs: Land Tenure and the Economics of Power in Colonial Peru. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1986. Simpson, Lesley Byrd. The Encomienda in New Spain: The Beginning of Spanish Mexico. Rev. ed. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966. Lance R.Blyth See alsoColonial Administration, Spanish ; Indian Policy, Colonial ; New Mexico ; Pueblo Revolt ; Spanish Borderlands . Encomienda , Encomienda, the right to control the labor of and collect tribute from an Indian community, granted to subjects, especially the first conquerors and… Cochineal , Cochineal (grana cochinilla), a bright red dye made from the bodies of small insects found on the nopal cactus. The production of cochineal dates to… Francisco De Toledo , Francisco de Toledo (1515-1584), the fifth Spanish viceroy of Peru, established his reputation in that office as one of the most talented and energet… Pueblo Revolt 1680 , PUEBLO REVOLT. After the Spanish established a colony in the Rio Grande valley in 1598, they seized Indian land and crops and forced Indians to labor… Mestizo , Mestizo Mestizo, a term used in the colonial era to refer to a person of evenly mixed Indian and Hispanic ancestry. The first generation of mestizos… Hernan Cortes , 1485-1547 Spanish Conquistador Hernán Cortés was a Spanish conquistador who succeeded in claiming most of present-day Mexico for Spain by conquering…
In the 1500s, Spain systematically conquered parts of North, Central and South America as well as the Caribbean. With Indigenous governments such as the efficient Inca Empire in ruins, the Spanish conquistadors needed to find a way to rule their new subjects. The encomienda system was put in place in several areas, most importantly in Peru. Under the encomienda system, prominent Spaniards were entrusted with Native Peruvian communities. In exchange for the stolen labor of Indigenous people and tribute, the Spanish lord would provide protection and education. In reality, however, the encomienda system was thinly-masked enslavement and led to some of the worst horrors of the colonial era. The word encomienda comes from the Spanish word encomendar, meaning "to entrust." The encomienda system had been used in feudal Spain during the reconquest and had survived in some form ever since. In the Americas, the first encomiendas were handed out by Christopher Columbus in the Caribbean. Spanish conquistadors, settlers, priests, or colonial officials were given a repartimiento, or grant of land. These lands were often quite vast. The land included any Indigenous cities, towns, communities, or families that lived there. The Indigenous people were supposed to provide tribute, in the form of gold or silver, crops, and foodstuffs, animals such as pigs or llamas or anything else the land produced. The Indigenous people could also be made to work for a certain amount of time, say on a sugarcane plantation or in a mine. In return, the encomendero was responsible for the well-being of the enslaved people and was to see to it that they were converted and educated about Christianity. The Spanish crown reluctantly approved the granting of encomiendas because it needed to reward the conquistadors and establish a system of governance in the newly-conquered territories, and the encomiendas were a quick-fix that killed both birds with one stone. The system essentially made landed nobility out of men whose only skills were murder, mayhem, and torture: the kings hesitated to set up a New World oligarchy which could later prove troublesome. It also swiftly led to abuses: encomenderos made unreasonable demands of the Native Peruvians who lived on their lands, working them excessively or demanding tribute of crops that could not be grown on the land. These problems appeared quickly. The first New World haciendas, granted in the Caribbean, often had only 50 to 100 Indigenous people and even on such a small scale, it wasn’t long before the encomenderos had virtually enslaved their subjects. In Peru, where encomiendas were granted on the ruins of the rich and mighty Inca Empire, the abuses soon reached epic proportions. The encomenderos there showed an inhuman indifference to the suffering of the families on their encomiendas. They did not change the quotas even when crops failed or disasters struck: many Native Peruvians were forced to choose between fulfilling quotas and starving to death or failing to meet quotas and facing the often-lethal punishment of the overseers. Men and women were forced to work in mines for weeks at a time, often by candlelight in deep shafts. The mercury mines were particularly lethal. During the first years of the colonial era, Native Peruvians died by the hundreds of thousands. The owners of the encomiendas were not supposed to ever visit the encomienda lands: this was supposed to cut down on abuses. The Indigenous people instead brought the tribute to wherever the owner happened to be, generally in the larger cities. The Indigenous people were often forced to walk for days with heavy loads to be delivered to their encomendero. The lands were run by cruel overseers and Native chieftains who often demanded extra tribute themselves, making the lives of the Indigenous people even more miserable. Priests were supposed to live on the encomienda lands, instructing the Indigenous people in Catholicism, and often these men became defenders of the people they taught, but just as often they committed abuses of their own, living with Native women or demanding tribute of their own. While the conquistadors were wringing every last speck of gold from their miserable subjects, the ghastly reports of abuses piled up in Spain. The Spanish crown was in a tough spot: the "royal fifth," or 20% tax on conquests and mining in the New World, was fueling the expansion of the Spanish Empire. On the other hand, the crown had made it quite clear that the Indigenous people were not enslaved but Spanish subjects with certain rights, which were being flagrant, systematically, and horrifically violated. Reformers such as Bartolomé de las Casas were predicting everything from the complete depopulation of the Americas to the eternal damnation of everyone involved in the whole sordid enterprise. In 1542, Charles V of Spain finally listened to them and passed the so-called "New Laws." The New Laws were a series of royal ordinances designed to halt the abuses of the encomienda system, particularly in Peru. Native Peruvians were to have their rights as citizens of Spain and could not be forced to work if they did not want to. Reasonable tribute could be collected, but any additional work was to be paid for. Existing encomiendas would pass to the crown upon the death of the encomendero, and no new encomiendas were to be granted. Furthermore, anyone who abused Indigenous people or who had participated in the conquistador civil wars could lose their encomiendas. The king approved the laws and sent a Viceroy, Blasco Núñez Vela, to Lima with clear orders to enforce them. The colonial elite was livid with rage when the provisions of the New Laws became known. The encomenderos had lobbied for years for the encomiendas to be made permanent and passable from one generation to another, something the King had always resisted. The New Laws removed all hope of perpetuity being granted. In Peru, most of the settlers had taken part in the conquistador civil wars and could, therefore, lose their encomiendas immediately. The settlers rallied around Gonzalo Pizarro, one of the leaders of the original conquest of the Inca Empire and brother of Francisco Pizarro. Pizarro defeated Viceroy Núñez, who was killed in battle, and basically ruled Peru for two years before another royalist army defeated him; Pizarro was captured and executed. A few years later, the second rebellion under Francisco Hernández Girón took place and was also put down. The King of Spain almost lost Peru during these conquistador uprisings. Gonzalo Pizarro's supporters had urged him to declare himself King of Peru, but he refused: had he done so, Peru might have successfully split from Spain 300 years early. Charles V felt it prudent to suspend or repeal the most hated aspects of the New Laws. The Spanish crown still steadfastly refused to grant encomiendas in perpetuity, however, so slowly these lands reverted to the crown. Some of the encomenderos managed to secure title-deeds to certain lands: unlike the encomiendas, these could be passed down from one generation to the next. Those families that held land would eventually become oligarchies that controlled the Indigenous people. Once the encomiendas reverted to the crown, they were overseen by corregidores, royal agents who administered crown holdings. These men proved to be every bit as bad as the encomenderos had been: corregidores were appointed for relatively brief periods, so they tended to squeeze as much as they could out of a particular holding while they could. In other words, although the encomiendas were phased out eventually by the crown, the lot of the Indigenous people did not improve. The encomienda system was one of the many horrors inflicted on the Indigenous people of the New World during the conquest and colonial eras. It was essentially enslavement, given but a thin (and illusory) veneer of respectability for the Catholic education that it implied. It legally allowed the Spaniards to work the Indigenous people literally to death in the fields and mines. It seems counter-productive to kill off your own workers, but the Spanish conquistadors in question were only interested in getting as rich as they could as quickly as they could: this greed led directly to hundreds of thousands of deaths in the Indigenous population. To the conquistadors and settlers, the encomiendas were nothing less than their fair and just reward for the risks they had taken during the conquest. They saw the New Laws as the actions of an ungrateful king who, after all, had been sent 20% of Atahualpa's ransom. Reading them today, the New Laws do not seem radical — they provide for basic human rights such as the right to be paid for work and the right to not be unreasonably taxed. The fact that the settlers rebelled, fought and died to fight the New Laws only shows how deeply they had sunk into greed and cruelty.
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