Encomenderos
The grantees of the encomienda were usually conquistadors and soldiers, but they also included women and Native notables. For example, Doña Marina and the daughters of Montezuma were granted extensive encomiendas as dowries. Puppet Inca rulers established after the conquest also sought and were granted encomiendas. The status of humans as wards of the trustees under the encomienda system served to "define the status of the Indian population": the natives were free men, not slaves or serfs. Conquistadors were granted trusteeship over the indigenous people they helped conquer. The encomienda was essential to the Spanish crown's sustaining its control over North, Central and South America in the first decades after the colonization, because it was the first major organizational law instituted on a continent where disease, war and turmoil reigned. Indeed the settler-conquistadors knew the fury of the aroused Indian lords—voyagers, explorers, and the friars did not. Initially the encomienda system was devised to meet the needs of the early agricultural economies in the Caribbean. Later it was adopted to the mining economy of Peru and Upper Peru. The encomienda lasted from the beginning of the sixteenth century to the seventeenth century.
In the Philippines, the encomienda was granted also to the local nobles (Principalia), through the law enacted by Philip II, on 11 June 1594.
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