slavery in pre-emancipation America
August 4, 2006 6:32 PM   Subscribe

Why didn't slave owners in pre-emancipation America make slaves of the Native Americans, opting instead to import slaves from abroad?

When the United States, particularly the agricultural South, was settled, the land was inhabited by various Native American peoples. Believing themselves superior to these "savages", why didn't the settlers enslave these people instead of attempting to exterminate them and herding those that survived westward?

Economically, I'd imagine the wholesale acquisition and importation of an African slave must have been a far riskier and more expensive endeavour for the slave trader/owner than the capture and conversion to slavery of the native peoples would have been.

I'm sure there are many individual instances of enslaved Native Americans. I'm more curious, though, about larger scale.
posted by CodeBaloo to Society & Culture (32 answers total) 8 users marked this as a favorite
 
Response by poster: And, as an entirely unrelated followup, any clues how to edit the title of a post since, obviously, some numbskull put the tags in the wrong field?
posted by CodeBaloo at 6:36 PM on August 4, 2006


They could run away and not get caught as easily?
posted by stoneegg21 at 6:36 PM on August 4, 2006


Less immune to malaria in the cottonfields. Plus what stoneegg21 said.
posted by beatrice at 6:38 PM on August 4, 2006


See the section "Why African slaves?" on the Wikipedia page on the African slave trade. Some of the reasons listed on that page:
  • Indians were vulnerable to diseases like smallpox which the Europeans brought with them.
  • Europeans were already familiar with the existing Arabian and Persian slave trade along East Africa.
  • Existing West African practice of enslaving prisoners of war provided ready supply of slaves.
  • Africans had experience with agriculture and keeping cattle.

posted by RichardP at 6:48 PM on August 4, 2006


To go along with what stoneegg said: support networks. Kidnap a local, and you've probably got his or her family - and possibly a larger network of Natives - coming for you. Make a habit of it, and you've got the entire native population pissed. Plus, if you've got natives as your slave population, they know each other; get outsiders from Africa, and you're more likely to get slaves who don't know each other, at least in the beginning.

On the other hand, bring 'em in from Africa and you have a group of slaves that don't know the area, don't know each other, and don't have a local group that would have an interest in liberating them.
posted by spaceman_spiff at 7:03 PM on August 4, 2006


From here:
American slavery began to change from the Indian to the "blackamoor" African in the years between 1650 and 1750. Though the issue is complex, the unsuitability of Native Americans for the labor intensive agricultural practices, their susceptibility to European diseases, the proximity of avenues of escape for Native Americans, and the lucrative nature of the African slave trade led to a transition to an African based institution of slavery.
Also interesting, from the same site:
In the 18th century, British colonies in the Southern US encouraged the Cherokees, Chickasaws, Choctaws, Creeks and Seminoles to own black slaves. Some of these nations, notably the Seminoles, also took in escaped slaves and refused to give them up when whites came demanding the return of fugitive slaves. In 1750, slavehunters were sent to retrieve a slave living in the Creek Nation. A Creek chief stood between them and the black man, cut their rope and threw it in the fire. The posse returned empty-handed. In 1770, a white observer reported that the Creeks allow slaves their freedom when they marry, which "is permitted and encouraged" and their children were considered free. Contemporary Euro-American records revealed a European fear for black/Indian mixing, for there were instances of Africans and Indians joining together in armed resistance against Europeans. A British officer had warned, "Their mixing is to be prevented as much as possible." In 1751, South Carolina law stated: "The carrying of Negroes among the Indians has all along been thought detrimental, as an intimacy ought to be avoided. A 16th century French colonial dispatch also stated "Between the races we cannot dig too deep a gulf". In the 19th century, a number of high ranking Seminoles married black wives - Chief Osceola was one of them. It was said that 52 of his 55 body guards were black. Seminole King Philip too had a black son John Philip, half brother to Chief Wild Cat. King Philip, Chief Osceola and Wild Cat were key figures in the 2nd Seminole war between the US and the Seminole Nation.10 The US General Sidney Jesup apparently saw the mixing of blacks and Indians in the Seminole Nation as a threat: .. the 2 races ... are identified in interests and feelings...Should the Indians remain in this territory, the negroes among them will form a rallying point for runaway negreos from adjacent states. When Native Americans in the United States were driven off their land by Europeans, some sought refuge in black communities, passing as 'colored' (of mixed Afro-European ancestry).
posted by Kirth Gerson at 7:19 PM on August 4, 2006 [5 favorites]


In the Caribbean, the Europeans did enslave the natives. But they died like flies and they couldn't work as long and as hard as African slaves.

By the time slavery had become established in North America, the African slave trade was already big business, and it was just easier to buy slaves off the ships than to go out and hunt for your own. Besides which, the superiority of African slaves had already been established.
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 7:22 PM on August 4, 2006


Mod note: edited title for you
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 7:25 PM on August 4, 2006


It was tried by the Spanish rather early on. They felt that the native americans were too fragile compared to black africans and also felt that they killed themselves too often.

Right in Columbus's memoirs (compiled by his son), he mentions the natives of Hispanola, and how he could enslave them easily. But it didn't work out that way-- either really or in perception, native americans didn't make good slaves.
posted by Mayor Curley at 7:25 PM on August 4, 2006


In Nathaniel Philbrick's most recent book, 'Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community,' he provides numerous instances of the enslavement of native Indians:
"More disheartening are the images of slave ships sailing away from the New World. As early as 1637, a group of American Indians was sold into captivity to a Puritan settlement on an island off the coast of Central America. Philbrick doesn't make apologies, but, again, he scrupulously adds context: 'From the perspective of the Plymouth magistrates, there was nothing unusual about enslaving a rebellious Native population. The English had been doing this in Ireland for decades.'

Still, in tallying the casualties from King Philip's War (1675-76), he notes that 1,000 men and women were 'shipped out of the country as slaves' — shameful for any generation."

[source]
Also --

Roots of the Slave Trade
"The British North American colonists’ practice of enslaving Indians for labor or direct sale to the West Indies preceded the appearance of the first chained Africans at the dock in Jamestown, Virginia, in 1619. The Jamestown colonists’ human transaction with the Dutch vessel was an unscheduled occurrence. However, once the African slave trade became commercially established, the fates of Indians and Africans in the colonies became inextricably entwined. New England, born of up-close-and-personal, burn-them-in-the-fires-of-hell genocide, led the political and commercial development of the English colonies. The region also led the nascent nation’s descent into a slavery-based society and economy.

Ironically, an apologist for Virginian slavery made one of the best, early cases for the indictment of New England as the engine of the American slave trade. Unreconstructed secessionist Lewis Dabney’s 1867 book 'A Defense of Virginia' traced the slave trade’s origins all the way back to Plymouth Rock:
'The planting of the commercial States of North America began with the colony of Puritan Independents at Plymouth, in 1620, which was subsequently enlarged into the State of Massachusetts. The other trading colonies, Rhode Island and Connecticut, as well as New Hampshire (which never had an extensive shipping interest), were offshoots of Massachusetts. They partook of the same characteristics and pursuits; and hence, the example of the parent colony is taken here as a fair representation of them.

The first ship from America, which embarked in the African slave trade, was the Desire, Captain Pierce, of Salem; and this was among the first vessels ever built in the colony. The promptitude with which the "Puritan Fathers" embarked in this business may be comprehended, when it is stated that the Desire sailed upon her voyage in June, 1637....The first feeble and dubious foothold was gained by the white man at Plymouth less than seventeen years before; and as is well known, many years were expended by the struggle of the handful of settlers for existence. So that it may be correctly said, that the commerce of New England was born of the slave trade; as its subsequent prosperity was largely founded upon it. The Desire, proceeding to the Bahamas, with a cargo of "dry fish and strong liquors, the only commodities for those parts," obtained the negroes from two British men-of-war, which had captured them from a Spanish slaver.

Thus, the trade of which the good ship Desire, of Salem, was the harbinger, grew into grand proportions; and for nearly two centuries poured a flood of wealth into New England, as well as no inconsiderable number of slaves. Meanwhile, the other maritime colonies of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, and Connecticut, followed the example of their elder sister emulously; and their commercial history is but a repetition of that of Massachusetts. The towns of Providence, Newport, and New Haven became famous slave trading ports. The magnificent harbor of the second, especially, was the favorite starting-place of the slave ships; and its commerce rivaled, or even exceeded, that of the present commercial metropolis, New York. All the four original States, of course, became slaveholding.'"
[source]
posted by ericb at 7:39 PM on August 4, 2006


Lewis Dabney 'A Defense of Virginia'.
posted by ericb at 7:42 PM on August 4, 2006


Best answer: Slavery and Native Americans in British North America and the United States
"Most Native American tribal groups practiced some form of slavery before the European introduction of African slavery into North America; but none exploited slave labor on a large scale. Indian groups frequently enslaved war captives whom they used for small-scale labor and in ritual sacrifice. Most of these so-called Indian slaves tended to live, however, on the fringes of Indian society.

...Once Europeans arrived as colonialists in North America, the nature of Indian slavery changed abruptly and dramatically. Indians found that British settlers, especially those in the southern colonies, eagerly purchased or captured Indians to use as forced labor in cultivating tobacco, rice, and indigo. More and more, Indians began selling war captives to whites rather than integrating them into their own societies. And as the demand for labor in the West Indies became insatiable, whites began to actively enslave Indians for export to the so-called "sugar islands."

The resulting Indian slave trade devastated the southeastern Indian populations and transformed Native American tribal relations throughout the region. The English at Charles Town, the Spanish in Florida, and the French in Louisiana sought trading partners and allies among the Indians, offering trading goods such as metal knives and axes, firearms and ammunition, intoxicants and beads, and cloth and hats in exchange for furs (deerskins) and Indian slaves captured from other tribes. Unscrupulous traders, frontier settlers, and government officials encouraged Indians to make war on other tribes to reap the profits from the slaves captured in such raids or to weaken the warring tribes.

It is not known how many Indians were enslaved by the Europeans, but they certainly numbered in the tens of thousands. It is estimated that Carolina merchants operating out of Charles Town shipped an estimated 30,000 to 50,000 Indian captives between 1670 and 1715 in a profitable slave trade with the Caribbean, Spanish Hispaniola, and northern colonies. Because of the higher transportation costs of bringing blacks from Africa, whites in the northern colonies sometimes preferred Indian slaves, especially Indian women and children, to blacks. Carolina actually exported as many or even more Indian slaves than it imported enslaved Africans prior to 1720. The usual exchange rate of captive Indians for enslaved Africans was two or three Indians to one African.

Until late in the 18th century, Indian slaves worked on English plantations along side African slaves and even, occasionally, white indentured servants. Women and children frequently were used as menial laborers or domestic servants. By 1720, most whites in the southeastern British colonies preferred enslaved Africans to Indians for obvious reasons. Indians could, for one thing, more easily run away into the wilderness. Also, Europeans always feared the possibility of a coalition of enslaved Africans and enslaved Indians, aided by free Indians on the frontier. What’s more, English settlers played the Indians off against one another in the various Indian wars or wars of empire fought between European colonial powers, using them as allies or as paid mercenaries. Additionally, Europeans commonly believed that Native American men, culturally conditioned to be hunters, considered fieldwork to be women’s work, and that Indian warriors would not adapt easily to agricultural labor in comparison to enslaved Africans. Most importantly, the demand for enslaved labor in the tobacco and rice plantations came to far exceed the potential supply of Indian captives, especially once European diseases began to decimate Indian populations and once the Indians began to more effectively resist European powers.

The Indian slave trade lasted only until around 1730, and it was characterized by a series of devastating wars among the tribes. Those Indians nearer the European settlements raided tribes farther in the interior in the quest for slaves to be sold, especially to the British. Before 1700, the Westos in Carolina dominated much of the Indian slave trade until the English, allied with the Savannah, who resented Westo control of the trade, wiped them out. The Westo tribal group was completely eliminated; its survivors were scattered or else sold into slavery in Antigua.

...The Indian wars of the early 18th century combined with the growing availability of African slaves essentially ended the Indian slave trade by 1750. Numerous colonial slave traders had been killed in the fighting, and the remaining Indian groups banned together more determined than ever to face the Europeans from a position of strength rather than be enslaved. Many of those Indians who remained joined confederacies like the Choctaw, the Creek, and the Catawba for protection, making them less easy victims of European slavers.

From 1750 to the American Civil War in 1861, Native Americans, especially those in the Southeast, interacted with enslaved blacks in every way possible, although there is no evidence that blacks ever owned Indian slaves."
posted by ericb at 7:54 PM on August 4, 2006


All of the above is true. However, Indians were enslaved a lot more often than we realize. Plantation records from the colonial period typically show a handful of enslaved Indians on the larger plantations, sometimes as much as 15-20% of the total. But much more common was to kidnap Indians and sell them as slaves to the sugar islands of the Caribbean. This was a huge industry in the colonial south, especially out of Charleston. English traders armed tribes like the Chickasaw, who raided deep into the interior of North America to capture Indian slaves, who they traded for more guns, etc. The New England Puritans typically sold their Indian captives the same way.

Alan Gallay's book _The Indian Slave Trade_ has the grim details.
posted by LarryC at 7:55 PM on August 4, 2006


Great discussion on this.

Interestingly enough, for many whites in America, the relationship between the races was more complicated than simply superiority versus inferiority. Royal officials from England (eg Sir Jeffrey Amherst, architect of the "smallpox blankets" incident) considered the Indians to be not worth consideration. But for the colonists, the Indians often represented interests worth defending. Thus, a conservative politician complained to New York governor George Clinton in 1751:
"But the greatest discouragement, in the management of the Indian Affairs, is by the Indians being constantly cheated by them with what they deal. This is a mischief which has been long complained of, and unless some Law were passed for the preventing of it, I know not how it can be remedied; for as the Law now stands, an Indian before he can obtain redress must fee a Lawyer, must take out a writ, fill a declaration, and at last wait twelve months for Justice, at two or three hundred miles distance, sometimes five hundred from his habitation,, and without one farthing to support him, or to defray the charges of the suit, and then, his evidence is not admitted in any of our Courts, nor the evidence of any other Indian."
He goes on at length about how this is an intolerable situation, etc. The very numerous records of conferences between white colonial authorities and the representatives of the Five (later Six) Indian Nations (ie, the Iroquois Confederacy) are less "Fetch me that there horse, boy" and more "Please please please help us fight the French, here, take these gifts." The Iroquois drove a hard bargain, and a good amount of colonial political correspondence is about how to stay on their good side--the idea that they should be enslaved or slaughtered would have been rejected as immoral, nonsensical, and impracticable.

With blacks the situation was very different. New York, for example, had two incidents which were considered "slave revolts" (the actual background is substantially more complicated), one in the 1710s and one in the early 1740s. In each case the result was massive paranoia and repression (for example, three blacks, even freemen, were not allowed to meet without a white man present). In the 1712 [IIRC] revolt, the alleged conspirators were tried by Thomas Newton, one of the principal judges of the Salem Witch Trials. Newton brought his unorthodox notions of admissible evidence with him (visions and so on). Of course, they were all found guilty and brutally executed.

So a typical colonist, given that she lived in an atmosphere of fear of the black population, would not necessarily have moral objections to black slavery. Indians, on the other hand, were perceived differently--maybe not noble savages, but at least as a civilization with peculiar and sophisticated ideas.
posted by nasreddin at 8:06 PM on August 4, 2006


The above applies to the Middle and New England colonies; as ericb has shown, the South was already peculiarly institutionalized.
posted by nasreddin at 8:07 PM on August 4, 2006


I was always told that the Catholic Church and Jesuits had a large role to do with this (Jesuits told me!). While the slave-trade is obviously incredibly complex let us not leave this out. Remember how it was the Spanish and Portugese who really came to the Americas first? Well they were strongly Catholic and at the time it was widely believed (or at least they claimed to believe it) that Africans and Indians had no soul, ergo they could be enslaved.

Paul III in 1537:

"Therefore, We, . . . noting that the Indians themselves indeed are true men and are not only capable of the Christian faith, but, as has been made known to us, promptly hasten to the faith' and wishing to provide suitable remedies for them, by our Apostolic Authority decree and declare by these present letters that the same Indians and all other peoples—even though they are outside the faith—who shall hereafter come to the knowledge of Christians have not been deprived or should not be deprived of their liberty or of their possessions. Rather they are to be able to use and enjoy this liberty and this ownership of property freely and licitly, and are not to be reduced to slavery, and that whatever happens to the contrary is to be considered null and void. These same Indians and other peoples are to be invited to the said faith in Christ by preaching and the example of a good life."

Right well the Spaniards were more powerful than the Catholic Church. And I clearly remember that they started using African slaves due to various loopholes -- that Africans may or may not have souls so let's just pretend they don't, that they were captured in war and were not in fact enslaved, etc. That does not mean that they stopped using Indians, just that most god-fearing Catholics did if it was convenient enough. Eventually the Catholic church and the Spanish lost enough control that they ceased to matter and I'm sure all the above comments including all attributed to the use of Africans. So that's what I have to add.
posted by geoff. at 8:10 PM on August 4, 2006


Oh, another crucial detail. There were laws in place (at least in New York) to prevent the black population from reading the Bible or hearing readings from it.

"Hold on, nasreddin," you might say, "surely Christians want to proselytize as many people as possible?"

No, Christians are a tricky bunch. They knew that if blacks were to be baptized, there could be no justification for denying them the rights of Englishmen. So the solution, of course, was to keep them ignorant and unsaved.

The Indians, on the other hand, had the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel breathing down their necks all the time.
posted by nasreddin at 8:15 PM on August 4, 2006


The whites tried but it was not easy to make slaves of Indians and it was not worth the trouble. On the other hand, there were many Indians who kept blacks as slaves. Over time, many intermarried with indian women and we have instances of mixed blood folks around today. In fact, my daughter-in-law has both black and indian blood handed on from some time ago. The Golden Hill tribe in and around Bridgeport, Ct is trying to get recognition in order to open casinos, and many detractors point out that the indians photographed in the local papers seem like blacks and not indians. They are both.
posted by Postroad at 8:33 PM on August 4, 2006


I didn't really catch if it was mentioned in the very comprehensive answers above, but another problem was that Indians were very hard to keep captive. They knew the countryside, the had strong social support networks they could flee to, and they could speak the language of native people or peoples. Imported blacks might not even be able to speak english, and were from drastically different geography and climate in many cases. What were they going to run away into? A land they didn't know full of angry people they couldn't communicate with. Lose/lose situation.

Around more cosmopolitan centers, and as slavery spread, black/indian communities occasionally sprang up, but by then the indians were pretty much on the unhappy end of genocide, so slavery was off the table.
posted by absalom at 8:37 PM on August 4, 2006


I only skimmed the entries above, but another argument that may be pertinent is the idea that to early white settlers, the Native Americans were white. According to the article (I can find the reference if you want), prior to the early 1800s Native Americans were not conceived of in terms of skin colour; many settlers believed that they were white people, but tanned. The discourse of the time emphasized cultural difference, yes, but rarely discussed the difference between Euro-Americans and Native Americans in terms of skin colour. Additionally, this contributed to the hope that Indians could be "elevated" to the "civilization" of the Euroamericans. They were frequently thought of as children who, with the right upbringing, could be raised to the heights of European culture.

Consequently, it was more difficult to justify the enslavement of Native Americans. If the Indians were, in fact, white, enslaving them was as abhorrent as enslaving another white man. However, discourse of the same period frequently emphasized the skin colour of Africans as a means to differentiate between the races.

Plus, there is the notion that until about the 1830s (if memory serves) Indians were often used in American discourse to differentiate Americans from their English forbears. Writers and intellectuals sought to develop the notion of "America" as a unique place and relied on the things they could identify that made the new nation different from the mother country. Among these things were the expanse of the land itself and the existence of the Indians. So, writers like James Fenimore Cooper, who actively sought to create a distinctively "American" literature, frequently turned to "Indian subjects." The attitudes toward race were quite complex and are to a twenty-first century audience pretty oddball.
posted by synecdoche at 8:57 PM on August 4, 2006


The Spanish Missions in the west were essentially slavery:
Victoria, a Tongva woman who grew up in Mission San Gabriel, testified that mission life was filled with misery, humiliation, and terror. She reported that the missionaries punished an Indian woman who had a miscarriage by having her head shaved, by being flogged every day for fifteen days, and by wearing iron shackles on her feet for three months, and by "having to appear every Sunday in church, on the steps leading up to the altar, with a hideous painted wooden child in her arms."

Lorenzo Asisaro, a neophyte at Mission Santa Cruz, testified that the mission Indians were subject to strict discipline: "The Indians at the missions were very severely treated by the padres, often punished by fifty lashes on the bare back. They were governed somewhat in the military style, having sergeants, corporals, and overseers, who were Indians, and they reported to the padres any disobedience or infraction of the rules, and then came the lash without mercy, the women the same as the men. The lash was made of rawhide."
posted by MonkeySaltedNuts at 9:04 PM on August 4, 2006


I didn't really catch if it was mentioned in the very comprehensive answers above, but another problem was that Indians were very hard to keep captive. They knew the countryside, the had strong social support networks they could flee to, and they could speak the language of native people or peoples. Imported blacks might not even be able to speak english, and were from drastically different geography and climate in many cases. What were they going to run away into? A land they didn't know full of angry people they couldn't communicate with. Lose/lose situation.

Exactly. The Romans for example would often not keep slaves in their native provinces, but ship them to different parts of the empire, for that reason. Not a new concept.
posted by uncle harold at 5:36 AM on August 5, 2006


I think nasreddin gets closer than anyone else to an important part of the answer, which is simply that for practical reasons pre-1800 Indian tribes, particularly in the East, were legally and practically considered sovereign states, just as (say) France or Spain were in Europe.

The relationship was very ambivalent, and it wasn't at all consistent and the British and then Americans constantly broke their own legal promises. But natives weren't seen as a mass of unorganized people to be exploited at will but as states upon whom their colonies depended.

Also it should be noted that people have always exaggerated the idea of "Indian slavery" - people captured in a war would certainly have been made "slaves" but what this in fact often followed by "adoption" or assimilation, not forced labor in perpetuity.
posted by mikel at 6:11 AM on August 5, 2006


I learned that slaves from Africa where used (among other reasons) to make the trip to the new world more economical.

So, for example, Portugal to Africa (pick up slaves), sail to new world, sell slaves (profit), buy sugar, return to portugal, sell sugar (profit). Repeat until you could buy land and lend money.
posted by maxpower at 9:13 AM on August 5, 2006


I just have to say that as an African-American, this might be the single most enlightening thread I've ever read on askmefi. I'm learning a lot.
posted by heartquake at 9:49 AM on August 5, 2006


Triangular trade -- sugar, rum and slaves (and other 'commodities.'
posted by ericb at 9:59 AM on August 5, 2006


Best answer: Maybe the important point here is that slavery assigned specifically to Africans came at the end of a long process of trial-and-error.

In Europe, the basic economic equation was that land was expensive (Europe was densely populated) but labor was cheap (poor peasants in great numbers). The focus for those hoping to get rich was on obtaining the scarce commodity, land.

Come 1492. All of a sudden the millenia-long equation of wealth is turned on its head. Land is cheap and labor is expensive. How frustrating for the European invaders. I have a thousand acres in Virginia, I should be rich. Who will work all this free land that we are stealing from the Indians?

The Indians? The Spanish make that work fairly well in Mexico and the Andes because they conquer sedentary societies with established hierarchies. The Spanish replace the Aztec rulers with themselves, and continue conscripting labor and drawing tribute. Eventually they turn that native labor towards new uses--cattle and mining--but they take over an existing labor system.

In North America, where Indian civilizations were at a lower level, the formula did not work. Individual Indians were not accustomed to laboring for someone else and resisted it massively. So they were either pushed beyond the boundaries of the English colonies (a process that ended in removal and eventually reservations), sold into slavery somewhere else, or simply killed. Where Spanish colonization forced the Indians to work, the English came to exclude them entirely.

So how about the poor wretches of Europe? Indentured servitude adapted an English system of contract labor to the New World. It was profitable, but the problem was that it was a contract and that the servants retained many rights as Englishmen, at least on paper. And it only lasted seven years. And the supply began to dry up in the late 1600s for a variety of reasons.

African slavery was the third attempt to find someone to do the dirty work of the southern colonies. The English had no tradition of slavery, they learned it from the Spanish and Portuguese (and made it even worse). African slaves had the advantages of being resistant to the Old World diseases that killed Indians with such ferocity, having no where to run, no communities to flee back to, and (from the English point-of-view) having no rights that need be honored. The very first Africans in Virginia were treated as indentures and eventually given their freedom. But as the 1600s wore on slavery was by degrees made permanent and inheritable. The modern idea of race=skin color was actually invented at this time, as a way of justifying slavery.

/professor off
//sorry about the lecture!
posted by LarryC at 10:07 AM on August 5, 2006 [2 favorites]


for practical reasons pre-1800 Indian tribes, particularly in the East, were legally and practically considered sovereign states

"[T]he end [1676] of King Philip’s War spelled the end of Native political sovereignty."

"The death of Philip [aka Metacomet, sachem of the Wampanoag] effectively ended Native American resistance in New England."

BTW -- I highly recommend Nathaniel Philbrick's new book, 'Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War' (mentioned above). I recently read it and found it to be an engaging "read."
posted by ericb at 10:10 AM on August 5, 2006


BTW -- the descendants of native Americans who were sold into slavery in Bermuda -- at St. George's island and sent to St. David's -- commemorate their heritage there to this day.
"Ramona Peters gave a brief history lesson, beginning with the colonization of the Wampanoag, Narragansett and Pequot territories. She told of the end of the Pequot War, the massacre, in 1637, of the Pequot village in Mystic, Conn., where Colonial forces surrounded the fort and burned alive as many as 600 people, mostly women, children and elderly.

'That kind of savagery was unheard of,' she said.

'It was the beginning of the effort to dismantle the power of our people,' Tall Oak said.

To prevent further resistance, the Colonists passed a law that Indian men over the age of 14 be sold into slavery, with Bermuda specified as a destination, perhaps as an effort to repay the colony for helping fund the Mayflower pilgrimage from Holland in 1620.

Native American slaves arrived in Bermuda as cargo, listed simply as 'Indian man' or 'Indian woman.' They were originally called Mohawks as a generic term, though it is highly unlikely any Mohawks were enslaved on the islands at all Tall Oak said."
posted by ericb at 10:18 AM on August 5, 2006


As another side note, after Emancipation, many abolitionists turned their eyes to the plight of the Indians. Another article I read discusses The Hampton Institute where they "educated" Indians alongside emancipated African-Americans. However, they were treated very differently-- the Indians were actually treated more along the lines of prisoners or wards of the state. They were expected to do more manual labour and work longer hours than their African-American fellows, because, the administrators of the school thought, Indians were more averse to manual labour (the perpetuation of the myth that Indians knew nothing of domestication of plants or animals).

Oh, and I found the references for the articles. The first one is:

Vaugn, Alden T. "From White Man to Redskin: Changing Anglo-American Perceptions of the American Indian." The American Historical Review 87.4 (1982): 917 - 53.

And the article I mention in this comment is:

Kerber, Linda K. "The Abolitionist Perception of the Indian." The Journal of American History 62.2 (1975): 217 - 95.
posted by synecdoche at 10:27 AM on August 5, 2006


I was hoping for more answers about the history of slavery in the Spanish colonies. I will type a little from one of my books in case no one who knows more ever follows up.

"The methods used to secure labor varied by region and over time. Encomienda, repartimiento/mita, free wage labor, yanaconaje, and slavery were the prinicpal means employed in Spanish America."

The practice of encomienda in the Caribbean had the natives treated essentially the same as the slaves imported from other areas.
Faced with incontrovertible evidence of this excessive exploitation, Ferdinand issued the Laws of Burgos in 1512, the first systematic attempt to regulate the Spaniards' treatment of the Indians. Better work conditions, adequate food and living standards, and restrictions on punishment were among its many, though unenforced, provisions.

[...]

Initially the mainland encomienda supported elements of indigenous culture and economy. Except where precious metals were found, the encomenderos' demands were similar to those of the preconquest indigenous elites. [...] In comparison to the Caribbean experience, the encomienda in Mexico and Peru had a settled character.
The Crown attempted to prohibit the slavery of Indians in 1542
...The Crown listened to colonists excluded from grants of encomienda and to a small, articulate group of clerics who condemned the encomienda as a major source of the ills suffered by the natives. The most effective lobbyist was the Dominican Bartolomé de las Casas, whose efforts led to the New Laws of 1542.

The New Laws authorized a viceroy for Peru and audiencias in Lima and Guatemala as part of their provisions to create a more effective administration and to imporve the judicial system. But they are best known for prohibiting Indian slavery, attacking the encomenderos in general, and ordering in particular that individuals responsible for the civil war in Peru be stripped of their encomiendas.
And so on--it is all extremely fascinating, and perhaps someone can follow up with good reading suggestions. After rummaging through my bookshelf, I cannot find the book I thought I had. drat. I seem to remember that it had reproductions of declarations of encomienda, repartimiento. I'm sure google must have them...
posted by bleary at 10:59 AM on August 5, 2006


As a side note: I'm really glad to see a thread this information rich on MeFi. This thread has effectively covered some of the more interesting points regarding the slave trade from an entire semester of early American history I took years ago where the Professor did an amazing job covering the history of the slave trade.

By the time I read all the way to this point everything I wanted to bring up had already been covered! :)
posted by JFitzpatrick at 7:40 AM on August 6, 2006


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