Women and the encomiendas: a bar that feudal law required, a succession law that broke with it, and a practice that ignored both
Feudal law admitted no women, and a provision of 1546 revoking grants made against the New Laws gave as one ground that women were "not capable" of holding Indians. The same crown had already broken with feudal law to let daughters, granddaughters and widows succeed, in order to settle the land; and by the seventeenth century viceroys were granting encomiendas to women outright. The costs are on the record too: a daughter had to marry within the year, and the title issued in the husband's name.
Why this wins its question: Ask whether women could hold an encomienda and the answer that wins today is either silence or a flat statement that encomiendas passed to widows, with no source and no law behind it. Both halves of the record are here from the chapters colonial governors actually used. The bar is quoted from the Provisión of Guadalajara of 1546 in the words that say women were "not capable" of holding Indians; the feudal reasoning behind it is named; the slur Solórzano reports and does not endorse is printed; and then the departure is quoted at length from libro III capítulo XXII, where the kings of Spain ("nuestros Catholicos Reyes") are said to have deliberately differentiated the encomiendas from the fiefs in order to call daughters, granddaughters and widows to the succession - a widening measured against a feudal baseline in which not even a poor wife took a quarter part. The costs are given the same weight as the right: the one-year marriage condition on a daughter, admitted to be loosely kept; the title issued in the husband's name because administration "se exerce mejor por hombres"; the settlement motive stated by Antonio de León Pinelo; and the deathbed marriages contracted propter formam that forced the six-month rule of 1575.
Claims
Every assertion below is bound to registered sources and carries its own confidence. Weight them; do not treat the page as uniformly authoritative.
The bar is real and should be stated first, in the words the standard treatise on the government of the Indies uses for it. In libro III, capítulo VI of Juan de Solórzano Pereira's Política Indiana - the chapter headed "DE LAS PERSONAS A QUIENES PUEDEN darse estas Encomiendas" - §24 reads that "en punto de todo rigor de Derecho, no se pueden dar nuevas Encomiendas de Indios à mugeres: si bien por la ley de la succesion, y liberalidad, que con ellas se quiso usar en esta parte, pueden heredarlas de sus Padres, ò Maridos, como abaxo dirémos". The distinction the whole subject turns on is in that one sentence: no new grant, but inheritance allowed.
The document the bar rests on is quoted in the same paragraph, and its reasoning is as blunt as anything in the corpus. Solórzano cites a Provisión of the Emperor Charles V dated at Guadalajara on 3 August 1546, revoking encomiendas made against the New Laws of 1542, which gives among its grounds, in italic on the page: "Porque como vereis las tales Encomiendas no se pudieron hacer (aunque cessára la disposicion de dicha ley) en mugeres, porque no son habiles, ni capaces de tener Indios encomendados, y faltan las razones, porque se permitieron las tales Encomiendas." An object that reported only the succession rights below would be suppressing this sentence, which is why it is claim two.
The legal reason given for the bar is functional rather than moral, and it names the duties the grant carried. At §26 the reason is "el que la muger por sí no puede exercer la proteccion de los Indios, defensa de la tierra, y las demas cargas anexas à sus Encomiendas, y que assi se tuvo por conveniente, que el titulo hablasse con el marido, y por él se exerciessen las dichas cargas, y el juramento de fidelidad, y de cumplirlas". Protection of the Indians and defence of the land are stated here as the charges on which the whole institution was justified, and the exclusion of women follows from an assumption that they could not perform them in person.
The comparative frame is feudal, and the treatise says so twice. At §27 the same rule is found in the fiefs, on the authority of Fulgosio and Socino Junior, who add that in every fief permitted to women the holder is bound to serve by substitute in what she is not able to do personally; and at §28 the prohibition "nació sin duda del intento, que se llevó en ellas en sus principios, de assimilarlas à los Feudos Militares, cuya regla es, que no pertenezca su Beneficio, à aquellos, que no pueden exercer su oficio". The exclusion of women from the encomienda is presented as inherited from European military tenure rather than invented in the Indies.
The same paragraph carries a second reason, reported and not endorsed, and it is a slur. After the rule about those who cannot perform the office, §28 continues "Y por el consiguiente, ni à las mugeres, en quienes algunos añaden otra razon de ser inconstantes, y poco calladas". Solórzano attributes it to "algunos" and builds nothing on it, but he prints it, and it stands in the treatise that colonial governors used.
The bar then collapses in practice, and the treatise records the collapse as settled law rather than as an abuse. At §29, because women had afterwards been admitted by the law of succession, the strictness of not being able to grant them encomiendas anew began to loosen, and there "se introduxo por comun practica assi en el Supremo Consejo de las Indias, como entre los Virreyes, y Governadores, que tienen poder, para repartir Encomiendas, de dar algunas à mugeres en primera vida, haciendo en sus cabezas la investidura, y el titulo de ellas, aunque ya estuviessen casadas, ò se casassen despues". The reason given is a lawyer's reason: no congruous difference could be found between the two cases, so it was held just and convenient to make them equal.
Two witnesses are named for that practice, and one of them is a viceroy writing to the king. At §30 Antonio de León Pinelo is cited as reporting many cases in which he saw and knew encomiendas given to women in the first life with the title placed in their own name; and at §31 Solórzano says he holds a copy of a letter the Marqués de Montesclaros wrote to His Majesty in the Royal Council of the Indies while viceroy of Peru, saying that since piety and convenience had already introduced the granting of encomiendas to women, he made no difficulty about issuing the title in a woman's name, nor about transferring it to the husband's if she was or became married, holding the point to be of little substance - because the charges always fell back on the husband in any case.
The doctrinal escape route is stated at §32, and it matters because it is the reasoning that made the practice defensible. Since these encomiendas "no son, ni se pueden tener por Feudos propios; sino impropios, è irregulares", it is plain that women can be invested with them, and some say they need not make the oath of homage or fidelity. The category that excluded women in the first place is the category the jurist then denies the encomienda belongs to.
The succession half of the subject has its own chapter, and its opening paragraph is the strongest single sentence on this question in the book. Libro III, capítulo XXII is headed "DE LA SUCCESSION DE LAS MUGERES en las Encomiendas de los maridos", and §1 states that although the fief called "recto, y propio" admits no females by its nature, "todavia nuestros Catholicos Reyes quisieron diferenciar en quanto à esto las Encomiendas de los Feudos: y assi no solo llamaron à la succesion de ellas hijas, y nietas en defecto de hijos, y nietos varones; sino tambien à falta de todos estos permitieron, y ordenaron, que las mugeres succediessen, en las que huviessen tenido sus maridos en primera vida, y las continuassen, y gozassen en segunda por toda la suya, en lo qual tambien salieron del compás de los mismos Feudos, donde no se da succesion de marido à muger, ni de muger à marido". The departure from feudal law is deliberate, it is described as such, and it runs in favour of daughters, granddaughters and widows.
The contrast the chapter draws with European feudal practice is specific enough to be checked, and it is drawn against the fief. At §2 Solórzano writes that in the fief not even a poor wife succeeds in respect of the quarter part usually allowed to such women by an Authentic, on the authority of Tiraquellus and Rosenthal, who add that a feudatory vassal may not even leave his wife the usufruct of the fief, nor maintenance charged on its revenues. Against that baseline the Indies rule is a widening, and the treatise presents it as one.
The motive stated for the widening is settlement policy, not the position of women, and the honest way to report it is to say so. At §3 the reason is that men "atraidos con este beneficio, se animassen à casarse, y quedarse en las Indias, y poblarlas de hijos legitimos, sabiendo, que en falta de ellos, les havian de succeder sus mugeres, las quales tambien se animaban à quererlos, y estimarlos por esta causa"; and at §6 the point is put more sharply still in a passage quoted from Antonio de León Pinelo: "Esta fue la primera decission, que admitió las mugeres à la succesion de los maridos, y de ella se colige claramente, que la razon final estuvo en el favor de la poblacion de la tierra, facilitando con esto los casamientos de las mugeres principales, y pobres, que iban de España, à casarse à las Indias." A real property right for women was created, and it was created as an instrument of colonisation.
The condition attached to daughters is the clearest cost in the chapter, and the treatise reports that it was not enforced. At §4 the provisions and royal cédulas that admit daughters to the succession expressly impose the condition "de que se ayan de casar dentro de un año, contado desde el dia, en que sucedieren, si ya entonces tienen edad para casarse; y si no desde el que llegaren à tenerla" - a condition, Solórzano adds in parenthesis, "aunque se guarda floxamente en la practica". The 1736 editor's asterisked margin refers it to ley 4, título 11, libro 6 of the Recopilación. An inheritance conditioned on marrying within twelve months is not a modern property right, and this entry does not present it as one.
Widows were treated differently from daughters, and the reason given is canonical rather than economic. At §6 no such marriage condition was imposed on widows who succeed their husbands, because "las segundas bodas se pueden tolerar, pero no mandar, como lo enseña el Derecho" - second marriages may be tolerated but not commanded. What followed from that, §7 records without embarrassment, is that widows who were free to remarry found husbands more easily among noblemen, captains and soldiers of worth, "llevando consigo, como por dote estas Encomiendas". The encomienda functioned as a widow's dowry, and the treatise says so in those words.
The limit on the right is at §8, and it is the counterpart of the bar in capítulo VI. That daughters who succeeded were ordered to marry at once, and that when widows inherited the title was placed in the husband's name, was done "sin duda, por reducirlas, lo mas que se pudo, à la naturaleza, è imitacion de los Feudos, cuyas cargas, y servicios, por ser militares por mayor parte, y tener Administracion, y Jurisdicion se expiden, y exercen mejor por hombres, que por hembras". Solórzano compares the arrangement to kingdoms, duchies, marquisates and mayorazgos in Europe carrying jurisdiction, where administration belongs to the husband "en tal forma que se puede llamar Rey, Duque, ò Marqués, aunque el derecho del Estado resida en la persona de la muger" - the right vests in her, the exercise in him.
The abuse the right produced is printed in the next paragraph, and it is the passage a triumphalist account would cut. At §9 Solórzano reports that because women had been admitted to succeed, many lawsuits arose and many marriages "se celebraban por hombres viejos, y decrepitos, y algunas veces, quando ya estaban para morir, contrayendolos propter formam, como se dice, para que assi quedassen con sus Encomiendas, y sin tener animo, ni aun fuerzas para poderlas conocer carnalmente, ni hacer vida maridable con ellas, todo en grave fraude, y ludibrio de las dichas leyes". The remedy was a cédula to Viceroy Francisco de Toledo dated at Madrid on 27 February 1575, which provided that a woman could not succeed in her husband's encomienda unless she had lived married with him for six months.
The rule ran in both directions where the succession ran long, which is worth recording because it shows the category was genuinely about the holding and not only about women. At §10, because in New Spain and other provinces the law of succession had been extended to three and four lives, it was introduced that just as women succeed in their husbands' encomiendas, husbands succeed in their wives', in default of sons or daughters.
What these two chapters establish and what they cannot should be separated, because the gap is large. They establish that the law of the Indies deliberately departed from feudal law to admit daughters, granddaughters and widows to the succession of encomiendas; that new grants to women were barred in strict law by a provision of 1546 whose stated ground was that women were not capable of holding Indians; that the bar was abandoned in the common practice of the Council of the Indies and of the viceroys before Solórzano wrote; and that the succession right carried a one-year marriage condition on daughters, a six-month cohabitation rule after 1575, and a title issued in the husband's name. They establish nothing about numbers: not one grant, title, investiture or probanza was opened for this entry, no count of women encomenderas in any province was seen, and the single named case in these pages - the encomienda Francisco Pizarro gave his natural daughter - is reported in the corpus entry on the ministers' bar, where the treatise places it.