Donatary captain

A donatary captain was a Portuguese colonial official to whom the Crown granted jurisdiction, rights and revenues over some colonial territory. The recipient of these grants was called a donatário (donatary), because he had been given the grant as a doação (donation) by the king, often as a reward for service.^[1]

The term also applied as the rank of the field officer that was in charge of a captaincy's territorial militia, called ordenanças in Portuguese, a military unit which existed from the 16th to the 19th centuries.