The encomienda system

Hi Kim. Hey Becca. So, what are we talking about today?

Today, we're going to be talking about how a racial hierarchy was established in the early Americas, about the encomienda system, the early Atlantic slave trade, and how such an arbitrary factor as race became a way that our society was organized. We still feel the effects of that today.

Okay, interesting. So to begin, we'll talk about the encomienda system. The encomienda system was this dependency release system that started in Spain and was brought to the Americas to control the labor system. Encomienda, that actually means "entrust" in Spanish. Spaniards that were entrusted with dividing up the labor within the Native American populations. So different encomenderos, those were Spanish men that were sent to the colonies, were entrusted with dividing up the labor between different Native American groups.

Okay, so this, to me, it sounds a little bit like a feudal system. Am I getting this right?

Definitely. So the feudal system was this earlier European medieval system where there'd be a lord, who would have the responsibility of protecting serfs, and in response, he'd get their labor and a part of their wealth. So this sounds a lot like the encomenderos and the Native Americans that were in his jurisdiction.

Okay, so the encomenderos would offer the Native Americans in their colony protection, and they would also offer them Catholicism. They were under this kind of God, Gold, and Glory motivation.

I think I've heard of that before.

Yeah, so God, Gold, and Glory were some of the reasons that colonists wanted to come to the New World. They really wanted to inspire and promote Catholicism abroad, and they really wanted to increase the practice amongst the native people.

Yeah, I think one of the things that we have to understand about this time period is how religiously motivated many people were. I mean, when it comes down to it, gold is going to be more of a motivator than religion. But you know, they saw their role as Christians, as Catholics, as trying to convert the entire world.

Right, and in return, the encomenderos expected from the native people a lot of labor. So the natives had much better understanding of the land itself that they were aiming to cultivate at the time period in the 1500s. The Spaniards, the Portuguese, the Dutch, the English—everyone's coming over and wanting to create new markets, especially with tobacco and sugar. The Native Americans under the encomienda system were expected to help the encomenderos produce at a really high rate in which they could send these goods back to Europe.

And I think it's worthwhile to note here that we're saying, "Oh, they wanted the labor of the Native Americans." Well, why didn't the Spanish just send their own people to process sugar, to grow tobacco up in the New World?

There were a couple of reasons for that. One is that they kind of knew that the New World was more or less a death trap. It wouldn't be until the mid-1600s that a lot of these places had a survival rate for settlers above 50%. So a lot of whites in Europe wanted to avoid that. They also didn't really see these plantations as being something they needed to work directly. They kind of thought, "I would rather stay in the court of Europe. I would rather be a lord." You know, many in England later—there will be many members of Parliament who own plantations in the West Indies, and they've never even been to those plantations, but they're sure profiting.

Yeah, I think that's definitely right. And when the encomienda system was more officially instated with Nicolás de Ovando in 1502, that was the first official encomienda system in the West Indies. He actually took over after Columbus was ousted from his role in El Salvador.

Why was Columbus ousted?

He was a really bad leader. Ovando really took over the encomienda system, and then it started to look a lot more like what we would call slavery. So slowly, the encomenderos would no longer offer the Native Americans protection, but instead threaten them if they did not reach their quota.

Okay, so instead of protection, they get threats, and oftentimes that turned into extreme punishment or death. They were forced to do extremely hard labor.

So, sowing a sugar plantation is not easy work. And so they expected extreme amounts of hard labor in the hot sun.

Yeah, processing sugar is like a 24-hour-a-day kind of deal, and it is, I think, perhaps the worst kind of labor you could do. And they weren't just trying to promote Catholicism but also stripping Native Americans of their culture and of their religious practices.

So Catholicism was not optional?

Catholicism was not something they were offering; it was something they were instituting with force. So as more conquistadores came over to the West Indies, some noticed, "This does look like slavery, and we are not treating the Native American people with dignity or really as humans at all."

Bartolomé de las Casas was an encomendero, but in kind of the mid-1500s, he came over to actually see his encomiendas in practice and realized the inhumane treatment and abuse the encomienda system promoted. He released his encomienda and started to dedicate his life to petitioning and lobbying the King of Spain, Charles I, to institute new laws that would protect Native Americans against these abusive practices.

Yeah, you know when you're looking around this time period for a good person in this system, Bartolomé de las Casas is pretty much the only one.

Yeah, he was a good dude amongst a lot of not-so-good dudes. And so in 1542, new laws—they were literally called the “New Laws”—were passed by Charles I. These laws didn't outlaw the encomienda system but aimed to put some regulation on these inhumane practices. The encomienda system wouldn't be outlawed completely until 1720.

Oh wow, so the effects of the encomienda system were already really being felt at this time and contributed to the formation of this arbitrary racial hierarchy that we will continue to talk about in the next video.