Slavery (American Indians)

Tribes affected: Widespread but not pantribal

Significance: Before European settlement, slavery helped determine status within many Indian societies; after European settlement, Indian slavery became an important economic institution and significantly influenced Indian-white relations

Slavery, a social institution which existed in most human societies before the twentieth century, was practiced by many native North American cultures.

Aboriginal Slavery

All forms of slavery exist to bring honor and power to the master. Before contact with Europeans, American Indian societies did not envision status and power in economic terms, and slavery was not primarily a system of labor. Aboriginal Indian bondage brought power and honor to the master through his absolute domination of a living being.

Most Indian slaves were acquired as war captives, and their enslavement was viewed as a substitute for death in battle. As a replacement for actual death, Indian slavery became a living “social death.” The war captive forever lost his status as an independent person and became an appendage of his master’s will. The loss of status was marked by rituals of dishonor. The heads of slaves were often shorn as a symbol of dishonor. Among the Tlingit of the Northwest Coast, female slaves were not allowed to adorn themselves with facial decorations. Slaves were often renamed to dishonor them and to sever connections with their lineage and past. The Nootka gave their female slaves insulting names. The Cherokee and Iroquois word for “slave” was also used to refer to dogs, cats, or other nonhuman living things that were owned. The master’s absolute power reached its highest level in the Pacific Northwest, where Indians often killed their slaves while mourning dead family members or celebrating important ceremonial occasions.

Slave Trade

European settlement changed Indian slavery into an economic institution. The Europeans needed laborers to develop their colonies and often purchased Indian slaves. An elaborate Indian slave trade system eventually spanned the North American continent.

Each of the European nations which colonized North America participated in this system. In the 1640’s, the Dutch colonists of present-day New York purchased slaves from the Indians and sold them to European colonies in the West Indies. Beginning in the late seventeenth century, French traders from Canada purchased slaves through Illinois middlemen. By the 1720’s, French traders from Louisiana were conducting a thriving trade for Indian slaves with the Pawnee and Osage. Some slaves worked on French plantations in Louisiana; others were resold to the French West Indies. Russian settlers in Alaska began using Aleut and Eskimo slaves in the 1790’s. Slavery caused a rapid decline in the native population, prompting the Russians to purchase slaves from the Fraser Valley and the region surrounding Puget Sound.

The Spanish and English conducted the largest trade in Indian slaves. In the 1530’s, Spanish traders from Mexico began purchasing Indian slaves in the American Southwest. Although the Spanish government outlawed Indian slavery in the sixteenth century, the laws were often violated. By the mid-seventeenth century, the Spanish trade had expanded to the American Great Plains. During the eighteenth century, Taos in present-day New Mexico became an important trading center for Indian slaves. As late as the 1850’s, the Taos-based slave trade remained active as the Utes sold their captives to Mexico. The Apaches, Comanches, and Pueblos were most often the victims of the Spanish slave trade.

The first Indians enslaved by the English were war captives, seized by Virginians in battle in 1622. Subsequently, every English colony used Indian slaves. By the 1670’s, the English slave trade reached far into the interior of North America through Indian intermediaries. At a time when English settlement extended only 100 miles beyond the Atlantic Coast, the English slave trade reached beyond the Mississippi River. English colonists purchased slaves originally captured in Illinois, Missouri, and Oklahoma. Most of the English slave trade funneled through the Carolina colony. From Charleston, Indian slaves were sold to New England, New York, and the West Indies. Some slaves were kept in the Carolina colony, and in 1708 Indian slaves constituted nearly 15 percent of the Carolina population.

The trade in Indian slaves significantly influenced diplomatic relations among Indian nations. Because most Indian societies obtained their slaves from war captives, the economic demand for Indian slaves caused some tribes to wage war solely for the purpose of acquiring slaves. European colonies and Indian nations formed several military alliances to obtain slaves through warfare. English, Spanish, and French colonists often sold their own Indian war captives to the West Indies.

Decline of Indian Slavery

During the eighteenth century, Indian slavery declined as whites came to prefer African slaves. Indian slaves were increasingly hard to obtain because of the rapid decline of the native population from new diseases borne by white settlers. Whites also found it difficult to prevent Indian slaves from escaping in their own native land, and Africans provided more efficient labor because of their familiarity with large farms in Africa. The enslavement of Indians often created tension with nearby Indian societies and led to diplomatic difficulties for European colonies. Nevertheless, the use of Indian slaves by whites was surprisingly long-lived. There were still some Indian slaves in Louisiana and Rhode Island during the 1770’s, in Massachusetts during the 1790’s, and in the American Southwest during the 1850’s.

Black Slavery Among the Indians

During the early nineteenth century, the international market for cotton caused the rapid expansion of white settlement into lands inhabited by southeastern Indian nations. Responding to this development, the Cherokees, Chickasaws, Choctaws, and Creeks also turned to commercial farming and began to use black slave labor. Even after their forced migration to the Indian Territory in present-day Oklahoma during the 1830’s, these Indian nations continued to use black slaves. By 1860, black slaves made up 14 percent of the population in the Indian Territory. During the Civil War, many Indian slaveholders supported the Confederacy against the Union. After the Union victory, the U.S. government required the abolition of slavery among the southeastern Indians, which was accomplished by treaty in 1866.

Bibliography

Bailey, L. R. Indian Slave Trade in the Southwest. Los Angeles: Westernlore Press, 1966.

Patterson, Orlando. Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1982.

Perdue, Theda. Slavery and the Evolution of Cherokee Society, 1540-1866. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1979.

Starna, William A., and Ralph Watkins. “Northern Iroquoian Slavery.” Ethnohistory 38, no. 1 (Winter, 1991): 34-57.

Washburn, Wilcomb E., ed. History of Indian-White Relations. Vol. 4 in Handbook of North American Indians, edited by William Sturtevant. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1988.

Wiegers, Robert P. “A Proposal for Indian Slave Trading in the Mississippi Valley and Its Impact on the Osage.” Plains Anthropologist 33 (May, 1988): 187-202.