Slavery in Indian Country: The Changing Face of Captivity in Early America

by Christina Snyder

Slavery existed in North America long before the first Africans arrived at Jamestown in 1619. For centuries, from the pre-Columbian era through the 1840s, Native Americans took prisoners of war and killed, adopted, or enslaved them. Christina Snyder's pathbreaking book takes a familiar setting for bondage, the American South, and places Native Americans at the center of her engrossing story.

Indian warriors captured a wide range of enemies, including Africans, Europeans, and other Indians. Yet until the late eighteenth century, age and gender more than race affected the fate of captives. As economic and political crises mounted, however, Indians began to racialize slavery and target African Americans. Native people struggling to secure a separate space for themselves in America developed a shared language of race with white settlers. Although the Indians' captivity practices remained fluid long after their neighbors hardened racial lines, the Second Seminole War ultimately tore apart the inclusive communities that Native people had created through centuries of captivity.

Snyder's rich and sweeping history of Indian slavery connects figures like Andrew Jackson and Cherokee chief Dragging Canoe with little-known captives like Antonia Bonnelli, a white teenager from Spanish Florida, and David George, a black runaway from Virginia. Placing the experiences of these individuals within a complex system of captivity and Indians' relations with other peoples, Snyder demonstrates the profound role of Native American history in the American past.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Native American, American History, School, Research, Native Americans

344 pages, Paperback

First published April 30, 2010

Reviews

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

Timely book to read in light of our country’s current racial unrest. Gave me a glimpse of slavery beginnings and how it was not just limited to blacks, nor white colonialists being the sole perpetrators. Rather, slavery had it’s start long before Europeans set root in this country. Did have difficulty following along at times with so many names to try to keep straight.

[Sasha (bahareads) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Snyder explores how the region's Native Americans practiced and understood captivity. Through the lens of captivity, she shows a new look at early American history because it touched Europeans, Africans, and Indians both captured and captor alike.

By exploring the long history of captivity among Native people, she gives a new perspective on race, slavery, and freedom. American and Native history cannot be separated because they are intertwined. Snyder says the opposite of slavery was kinship, not freedom. Kinship ties conferred power. Native captivity practices and ideas of race remained fluid long after White ones had hardened. Only with the second seminole war would they start to change.

[KW · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book starts off with a dry and academic tone, but once you get into it, it's fascinating. It concentrates on life among the southeastern Indian tribes from pre-Columbus to about 1850 and traces the changing concept of slavery. Pre-white folks, you were kin, ally, or enemy, and all enemies were fair game as slaves. On the plus side, slavery wasn't hereditary and you could be traded back to your tribe or adopted in your new one. But as time went on, slavery in Indian country became pretty much a mirror image of slavery in the white US. The interesting thing is how it got there and who defied that "norm."

[Gale Brow · Rating 5 out of 5]

The introduction is not very good. But, the book is incredible! The stories and the facts that she gives and tells us - incredibly interesting! Slavery certainly changed over the years in the Southern Indian territory. Racism raises its ugly head, but the information gleaned from this book - is most interesting. A great book if you are interested in what happened in the real world between the years of "discovery" and Manifest Destiny!

[Jessica · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was interesting and definitely a part/view of Southeastern Native American society that I had not learned about before. Although the book is written in a factual and non-biased manner, the light it sheds on these Native Americans is not a good one. I give the book only three stars because I dislike reading about people being brutally killed and tortured.

[Michael Riversong · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book tied up many loose ends in American history. For example, now i know how Andrew Jackson got that way. More than any other, this book shows how Native American cultures in the South contributed to everything that happened later on.

[Richard · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book provided an in depth and comprehensive analysis of the history of slavery as practiced by various Native American tribes living in what became the southern USA. The author mined an impressive array of sources: archaeological studies, government documents, legal dispositions, narratives by people living at various times, and academic journal articles and books. She integrated these into a well organized narrative which summarized the origins and evolution of NA practices of captivity over the course of the 15th through the middle of the 19th centuries. The book also provided a lot of info about some of the tribes living in that area and their relationships with each other, tribes from the north, European settlers, and African American slaves. There was a particularly informative chapter on the Seminoles and their relationships with African American escaped slaves, etc.

By relying for the most part on a straight forward prose and by injecting anecdotes in a timely way Snyder made this highly readable. The anecdotes allowed her to present the sometimes nuanced differences in the ways various tribes practiced slavery over time.

There is only thing I wish she had done differently: include more maps. This would have made it easier to grasp her portrayals of the places where the tribes utilized slaves to meet their economic, political, and/or social needs.

This is a great book for those who want a broad perspective on NA slavery practices in the context of their history and culture in relationship to other tribes and the growing incursion of Euro-American settler society in the 18th and 19th centuries. I liked it enough to want to read her book entitled Great Crossings. Slavery in Indian Country would be a fine companion piece to books on a the practices of a specific tribe/individuals like Ties that Bind or The House on Diamond Hill by Tiya Miles. Another good book would be Citizens Creek by Lalita Tammy. This is the story of how an African American slave became the chief of a Creek tribe in the 19th century.

[Joseph Stieb · Rating 4 out of 5]

In Slavery in Indian Country, Christina Snyder illuminates the complex and dynamic institution of captivity in the early American southeast up to the mid nineteenth century. Captivity in this narrative could best be described as an adaptive tradition. The practice of captive taking remained consistent throughout the time span of this book, yet it adapted to new needs, conditions, ideas, and pressures. Snyder’s great accomplishment in this book is accounting for the myriad factors behind these changes, demonstrating continuity within change, and avoiding the pitfalls of determinism and Eurocentrism. This remarkably well-written and cogently argued study deserves a place as a standard text in early American and Indian history.
Snyder demonstrates that captive-taking served many purposes in Indian societies. Captives could be adopted and incorporated, enslaved within the tribe, sold into slavery, sacrificed for religious purposes, or given away to demonstrate political prowess. In turn, the practice of captivity transformed other aspects of native societies. One of the most interesting examples of this complex process of change is seen in Snyder’s portrayal of the rise and fall of the Chickasaws in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The Chickasaws adapted their captivity tradition to the economic demands of Carolina colonists for Indian slave labor. They sought valuable European goods such as flintlock rifles and rum in exchange for slaves, experiencing what Snyder calls a “consumer revolution” in parallel to the increasing consumerism of colonial societies (52). Snyder avoids privileging economic explanations of Chickasaw actions by showing that they also used the Indian slave trade to weaken political opponents by monopolizing access to the colonists and their valuable goods and weapons. The relationship between captivity and warfare changed dramatically as captives became the goal of warfare rather than a “by-product” of warfare, as it was in the Mississipian period (65).
Nevertheless, Snyder is careful to account for changes in the practice of captivity without simply stating that the Indians were adapting to exogenous, Euro-American demands. Many traditional aspects of captivity persisted among the Chickasaws, including adoption as compensation for population decline. More importantly, the colonial Indian slave trade was already compatible with conventional native views of captives. Indians traditionally viewed people outside of their kin as essentially non-human, making it easy and acceptable to sell these people to colonists. Thus we see Snyder’s complex portrayal of continuity of past practices within a changing system. As she puts it, “older notions about captivity did not simply vanish as a new slave market arose.”
Snyder further demonstrates the complex adaptation of captivity in her discussion of adoption and race. Indians had long adopted and incorporated captives into their societies more on the basis of sex and age than race. She argues that until the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Indians and Euro-Americans did not embrace exclusive racial categories and accepted “the possibility of cultural conversion” (126). The basis of Indian identity was kinship, and blacks, whites, and other Indians could all become kin after a period of integration. It is not clear whether Snyder would apply this cultural mutability to colonial relations between Euro-Americans and blacks, but she persuasively shows that some convertibility existed between Euro-Americans and Indians.
Snyder then shows that many factors came together to change the native practices of captivity and race. Pan-Indian leaders promulgated the idea of polygenesis, which states that whites and Indians came from separate divine creators and therefore possess certain inherent traits. They sought a foundation for pan-Indian unity in the face of increasing American encroachment on their territory. These factors increased a sense of intrinsic differences between Indians and whites, thereby transforming captivity and adoption practices. By the early nineteenth century, Indians rarely adopted whites and blacks into their tribes, seeing them as inherently different and nefarious. As they adopted new economic patterns of commercial agriculture, they became more likely to enslave black captives on a transgenerational basis rather than adopt them as equal kind. Still, the tradition of captive-taking and adoption continued within these changes as most Indians were still willing to incorporate other Indians into their kin networks as part of a broader notion of Indian solidarity. Rather than portraying Indians as adopting the Western concept of race, Snyder subtly explains that Indians and Euro-Americans grew into a more racial worldview concurrently.
The system Snyder describes cannot be described as a primarily cultural, political, ideological, religious, social, economic, or military institution. Rather, she shows that captivity intersected with all these aspects of Indian societies and changed in accordance with new conditions and pressures. She avoids determinism of all types by showing the diverse and connected factors that changed captivity practices. She skillfully gives us a sense of the broad patterns of Indian captivity and slavery while also providing fine-grained descriptions of these practices at different points in time.

[Anthropology_nerd · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great overview of the changing nature of slavery in the American Southeast. Snyder does a magnificent job explaining the deep roots of indigenous slavery in America, before exploring how notions of captivity, kinship, and adoption changed in the years following contact.
A must read for those interested in the history of the Native Southeast, as well as those trying to understand the development of race-based chattel slavery in North America.

[Danny · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed this one. Really fleshes out the history of slavery in Early America. Also, it is enjoyable when I find another historian utilizing the history of the Compere family in their discussion, as Snyder mentions Lee Compere and his missionary work in Early America. Very brief, but I now have another primary source I can look for to understand more about my family's history. Overall, Snyder's work is very digestible and worth the read.

[Kaila · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a great book to read if you're looking to get into Indigenous history in the U.S. Snyder does a great job of conveying the role of Indigenous communities in American history (as well as pulling back the curtain from Indigenous history pre-contact) concerning captivity and slavery practices. Truly a great book for anyone to pick up and get a lot out of.

[Josh Reid · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent example of ethnohistory

[Sue]

Skimmed through the pages that discussed the Choctaw tribe.

[Mary Catelli · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bit of a misnomer. It treats with slavery among the "Southern Indians" -- those on the East Coast and as far west as the Mississippi who were south of the territories that the Iroquois controlled. Not that meant that the Iroquois were not sometimes a problem. . . .

It opens with accounts of the Mound Builder chiefdoms: vast area controlled by high-status religious figures, the chiefs, often claiming to be descendants of the Sun. Nutritional deficiencies, particularly those springing from a diet too heavily based on corn, were commonplace among the lower classes. Particularly the slaves taken in battle. Slavery was not in opposition to freedom -- it was in opposition to kinship. Those who were slaves had no place in the clan structure. And there were a good number since they were always at war, as shown by the way that they did not live in agriculturally efficient small villages, but clumped together. Also by the injuries shown in the graves.

We know of this in part from the Spanish accounts. They were not very successful as conquerors or colonists, but they still destroyed them, accidentally, with disease. They had reorganized themselves in structures more suited to their diminished population by the time they had contacts with whites, which had to help.

War captives did not have to be enslaved; they could be adopted, or tortured to appease the souls of the dead. This was one reason why the captivity accounts did not include rape, even though there were many practices of rape in various cultures; the danger of incest. It resulted in a very heterogeneous population by appearance. All bets were off after they had not been adopted, though. . . They were also used to fetch water and firewood, which is more difficult than it sounds, often involving long distances in dangerous places.

They regarded whites and blacks as different sorts of tribes until solidly into in the 18th-century. There were "whites" (British), French, and "Christians" (Spanish). They made heavy use of the slave trade to the white to get guns and other goods, because slaves were more compact value than deerskins, the other valued good. Many raids were conducted for the product. (And killing women and children was considered more impressive than killing men, because men were often in the forest, and to kill a woman you had to strike into their very settlement.) It took decades and a war before that slackened off; their greater vulnerability to disease, ability to run away, and the war convinced white settlers to look to black slaves.

And the Indians as well. By the nineteenth century, most were settling into the same practices as the "Virginians" -- anyone who wanted their land, include Spaniards, and even some Indians. They preferred ranching to farming after hunting was impossible. Raids to capture blacks were better than those to capture whites because you could sell blacks to anyone, not just their families and government officials. Blacks who escaped to their territory were usually re-enslaved, and it became the practice that their children were also slaves, which had not been earlier. Those captured in raids might like it better but might appeal to government officials in hopes of getting back to their white masters. (Oral histories of erstwhile slaves seem to indicate that oddly enough, slaves of the Indians found them a mixed bag.)

And the definition of "red" "black" and "white" were settling in, even with creation stories: God created white man first and pitied him for his weakness, then he tried again and made the black, whom he did not like at all, and then finally got it right with the red -- the white, being pitiful, was allowed to chose his place first, and chose learning, the red, being manly, chose weapons of war, and the black was relegatedto labor because God did not like him at all.

The Seminoles, oddly enough, kept up older practices for longer with the Black Seminoles.

Lots of interesting stuff.

[David Bates · Rating 5 out of 5]

Using captivity customs as a lens through which to explore the history of the southeastern Indian nations, Christina Snyder’s 2010 work Slavery in Indian Country engages questions of identity and cross cultural contact. “Native people doubted that outsiders were fully human, and they certainly did not believe that all people were endowed with natural rights,” Snyder tells us. Membership in the group was of paramount importance, and native stories of “origins typically focus on their own group, not on the origins of all Indians or all of humanity. Indian tribal names often translate as the ‘real people.’” Nevertheless, incorporation into the group through fictive adoption or intermarriage remained possible for captives – and the option of using captives as property or adoptees proved crucial to Indians of the Southeast. Captivity practices dovetailed with the slavery practices of the Southern colonies, which tribes like the Chickasaw’s used to great advantage in a slaves for guns relationship with Carolina in the 16th and early 17th century. Other southeastern multi-ethnic nations like the Creeks and Chocktaws relied heavily on captivity to integrate peoples fragmented by plague, war and famine into cohesive groups. Following the collapse of the deer population and the pelt trade in the late 17th and early 18th century many Indians turned to ranching and planting, bringing slave labor oriented toward market production deep into the interior of the southeast, or profiting from it near the southern colonies by collecting rewards for escaped slaves. The 18th century saw a shift in captivity practices which Snyder finds particularly significant, as the economic uses of slaves and cultural contact with the southern colonies fostered a growing racial consciousness on the part of Indians, making them less likely to absorb Africans or Europeans into their tribes and less likely to fight against other native groups.

[Shawn · Rating 4 out of 5]

This academic work gave me a much greater understanding of tribal conflict that occurred in the American southeast. It seems well researched and avoids painting American Indian tribes, white settlers or the free and enslaved blacks with too broad of brush strokes. She simply points out trends and similarities and allows the reader to draw his or her own conclusions. Her insights into social structures and trends prior to Europeans is balanced and solidly based on archeology. I found it interesting how Native Americans determined eligibility for enslavement was based more upon "kinship" rather than racial classes. This book is a must for anyone wanting to establish a solid grounding on tribal conflict and slave practices and the manner it was similar and different from its European counterpart.

[Pat Carson · Rating 3 out of 5]

The subtitle says everything. This book studies southern Indian tribes in the United States and how they changed their traditions about captivity and slavery.