Definitions
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun In a special use, an estate in Spanish America, comprising land and Indian inhabitants, granted to one of the early military adventurers.
Etymologies
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Examples
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This experience launched Las Casas on his lifelong crusade against mistreatment of Indians, as exemplified by two institutions known as the encomienda and the repartimiento.
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The Indians who survived were enslaved under an economic system known as encomienda in which the conquistadors were authorized to occupy Indian lands, tax the inhabitants, and force them to perform labor.
EMPIRE OF THE SUMMER MOON S. C. Gwynne 2010
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This experience launched Las Casas on his lifelong crusade against mistreatment of Indians, as exemplified by two institutions known as the encomienda and the repartimiento.
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After the Spanish conquest, a system known as the encomienda was established in Mexico, with the objective of repartitioning the indigenous land and its inhabitants.
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After the Spanish conquest, a system known as the encomienda was established in Mexico, with the objective of repartitioning the indigenous land and its inhabitants.
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After the Spanish conquest, a system known as the encomienda was established in Mexico, with the objective of repartitioning the indigenous land and its inhabitants.
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Indians as his heirs to a large portion of his possessions, namely his encomienda of Bigan.
History of the Philippine Islands Antonio de Morga 1597
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However, kind words, kind looks, and the present of that inestimable treasure -- a knife, brought him to reason; and he told Amyas that he belonged to a Spaniard who had an "encomienda" of Indians some fifteen miles to the south-west; that he had fled from his master, and lived by hunting for some months past; and having seen the ship where she lay moored, and boarded her in hope of plunder, had been surprised therein by the Spaniards, and forced by threats to go with them as a guide in their search for the English.
Westward Ho!, or, the voyages and adventures of Sir Amyas Leigh, Knight, of Burrough, in the county of Devon, in the reign of her most glorious majesty Queen Elizabeth Charles Kingsley 1847
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A similar assessment of the Acalán encomienda in 1553 suggested about 4,000 Indians living in that province.
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A similar assessment of the Acalán encomienda in 1553 suggested about 4,000 Indians living in that province.
novazembla commented on the word encomienda
"The encomienda is a trusteeship labour system that was employed by the Spanish crown during the Spanish colonization of the Americas and the Philippines." (source)
Nasty concept but fun to say. I love that it suggests "eating up" (comiendo).
June 2, 2009
chained_bear commented on the word encomienda
"Desperate to prevent a mutiny, he (Cortes) granted them something they wanted almost as much as gold and treasure: rights to the labor and tribute of the people they had conquered.
"The conquistadors called these grants encomiendas, a term rooted in the Reconquista, Catholic Castile's medieval struggle against Moorish Spain. During this centuries-long crusade--which finally ended in Castile's victory over Muslim Granada in 1492, mere months before Columbus set sail for America--it became common practice for Castilian knights to receive temporary jurisdiction over the people who lived in the villages they had captured from the Moors. Patterned after this medieval encomienda system, Cortes's grants were eventually awarded to about half the conquistadors who survived the battle for Tenochtitlan, with the greatest number going to those men who had been with Cortes since the first days of the Conquest.
"In Mexico, as in Spain, the men who held encomiendas were called encomenderos...."
Amy Butler Greenfield, A Perfect Red: Empire, Espionage, and the Quest for the Color of Desire (New York: Harper Collins, 2005), 55.
"Though long accepted in Spain, the system as practiced in the Americas was already under serious attack by the time Cortes introduced it to Mexico in 1522. Leading the charge were Dominican clerics, who had recently convinced (Emperor) Charles V and his advisers that <i>encomienda</i> grants were archaic, ill conceived, and immoral. ...
"In Spain, <i>encomenderos</i> who abused their power could be brought to heel by the Crown, but in the faraway American islands no such limits applied. Far from the king's reach and crazy for gold, <i>encomenderos</i> forced the islands' native people to leave their families and search for the precious metals in rivers and streams. Others repeatedly tortured, starved, and raped the people in their charge, turning the sunny Caribbean into a charnel.
"'Tell me, by what right of justice to you keep these Indians in such a cruel and horrible servitude?' an appalled Dominican priest asked his Hispaniola parishioners in 1511... but the <i>encomenderos</I> ignored it."
(p. 57-58)
October 5, 2017