1. Encomienda System
Notes and Activities

2. Video
New Spain, Spanish Explorers and Spanish Colonies Video (6:32 Mins)
Then discuss a definition for the Encomienda System in your group

3. 5 W’s of the Encomienda System
What:
Encomienda System - a grant of land made by Spain to a settler in the Americas, including the right to use Native Americans as laborers on it.
Who & When:
Spain from the 1500s to the late-1500s/early-1600s
Where:
Areas in the Americas claimed by Spain
Specifically, present-day Mexico, Central America, Western South America, and part of South and Southwest United States
Why:
To set up a system of how the land and people would be controlled ensuring that Spain profited from these new lands
To protect the natives and to teach them the Catholic faith
Reward explorers, conquistadors, and settlers

5. How did the Encomienda System work?
Hacienda – land granted to a Conquistador, explorer or settler in the New World
Patrón - head of the Hacienda– he was in charge of the people and peasants that lived and worked on the land
Encomienda System is what provided the labor for the Hacienda
Patrón obligated to pay workers, educate them, protect them and make sure they could live off the land
this is NOT what ends up happening

7. How did the Encomienda System work?
Encomienda System is set up much like a Caste System or Feudal System in the Middle Ages
A system to subjugated or keep down the lower classes
Peninsulares – people born in Spain – in control
Creoles – both parents are Spanish (pure blood), but they were born in the colonies rather than in Spain
Could inherit the land from their parents if they were Peninsulares.

8. How did the Encomienda System work?
Made up of two groups – working people of Spanish society in the colonies – mainly in small towns and communities
3a – Mestizos – mixed blood of children from a Peninsulares and a Native Indians – because they have some Spanish blood they are considered above any native
3b – Mulattos – mixed blood but with a Peninsulares and an African slave – higher place in society because they are not purely a slave
Forced Labor - lowest group
Native Americans and slaves from Africa
Had no rights – worked on sugar plantations or in gold/silver mines – treated harshly

9. Encomienda System Fails
Originally designed to protect and education (religiously) Native Americans in Spanish colonies
Degraded into nothing more than systematic oppression and exploitation
Natives were required to pay tribute (money or resources) set by the Patrón
End up caught in a vicious cycle: too poor to pay for the food they needed, so force to work harder and longer to earn more money.
This led to many Native Americans dying from disease, starvation, and exhaustion
The Spanish needed a new source of labor in their colonies

10. Bartolome de Las Casas
Bartolome de Las Casas was a Spanish religious leader who spoke out against the Encomienda System and wanted new laws to protect and free Native Americans in 1539.
By 1542, New Laws were passed to reform the Encomienda System, but not end the Encomienda System
New rights for Native Americans indirectly caused an increase the number of enslaved Africans sent to the

11. Legacy of the Encomienda System
Encomienda System causes the exploitation and oppression of the Native Americans in Spanish colonies
Causes the destruction of native culture, religion and population, especially ancient civilizations (Aztecs and Incas)
Leads to the use of the Transatlantic Slave Trade (TAST)

12. The End