America’s Forgotten Slaves: The History of Native American Slavery in the New World and the United States

by Charles River Editors

*Includes pictures *Includes a bibliography for further reading *Includes a table of contents “The carrying of Negroes among the Indians has all along been thought detrimental, as an intimacy ought to be avoided." – A passage from a 1751 South Carolina law It has often been said that the greatest invention of all time was the sail, which facilitated the internationalization of the globe and thus ushered in the modern era. Columbus’ contact with the New World, alongside European maritime contact with the Far East, transformed human history, and in particular the history of Africa. It was the sail that linked the continents of Africa and America, and thus it was also the sail that facilitated the greatest involuntary human migration of all time. The African slave trade is a complex and deeply divisive subject that has had a tendency to evolve according the political requirements of any given age, and is often touchable only with the correct distribution of culpability. It has for many years, therefore, been deemed singularly unpalatable to implicate Africans themselves in the perpetration of the institution, and only in recent years has the large-scale African involvement in both the Atlantic and Indian Ocean Slave Trades come to be an accepted fact. There can, however, be no doubt that even though large numbers of indigenous Africans were liable, it was European ingenuity and greed that fundamentally drove the industrialization of the Transatlantic slave trade in response to massive new market demands created by their equally ruthless exploitation of the Americas. What far less people are familiar with are the other forms of slavery in America, and the victims who were enslaved. Sizable numbers of Native Americans were enslaved, with some of them working alongside African slaves in the fields and others shipped off to the sugar islands. The total number of natives enslaved over the whole colonial period for both American continents is estimated at somewhere between 2.4 and 4.9 million, while estimates for North America north of Mexico are 141,000 to 340,000. These estimates do not seem to include slaves held by the native peoples themselves, nor do they include the serf-like status still a bit short of slavery that was imposed on millions of others. Prior to the European colonization of what is now the United States, native groups themselves took captives. Men were often killed, and children were incorporated into their captors’ tribe, but there were hundreds of tribal peoples and many variants on the fate of captives. In the Pacific Northwest, slaves were killed in rituals, including being ritually cannibalized. After the arrival of the Europeans, the number of captives increased, and their fates became intertwined with the colonists and their African slaves. In the Southwest, there was a slave trade in New Mexico and northern Mexico involving captives for use as domestic servants and sales to the silver mines in Mexico. The formidable Comanches were just another nomadic group until they were exposed to horses (probably from stock released during the Pueblo rebellion of 1680 in New Mexico). They formed a new culture and became an almost imperial force, which involved conducting raids for slaves. Afro-Tejano slaves in Spanish Texas had different social circumstances than slaves held in the later Texas Republic. In the Southeast, slave raiding and trading involved the colonies of the English, Spanish and French. Moreover, several thousand free African Americans owned slaves and slavery in the United States did not end with freeing slaves in the South in 1865.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, American History

71 pages, Kindle Edition

Published November 24, 2019

About the author

Charles River Editors is an independent publisher of thousands of ebooks on Kindle, Nook, Kobo, and Apple iBookstore & provider of original content for third parties.

Reviews

[Kelvin Reed]

"America’s Forgotten Slaves: The History of Native American Slavery in the New World and the United States" (2019) by Charles River Editors is a fascinating book recounting North American and European involvement in Native American slavery. From warring Native American tribes enslaving the defeated even before the arrival of European settlers, to post Civil War enslavement of Native Americans, the book is a reminder that this is a historic human tragedy. The sexual slavery of women, always an element in these matters, is all but avoided. Still, highly recommended.

[James Crawford]

This is a very interesting book on the history of Native American slavery, something generally not discussed very much if at all. It notes that having slaves enhanced the status of the owner in the tribe. It also points out that the slaves had more rights than black slaves.

Something I definitely did not know was that Vikings took some Native Americans as slaves during their explorations of the continent. Columbus took around 500 of the natives slaves. (Plus his men gave many of the people there venereal disease. And we celebrate his day why?)

The book also goes into other places that had slaves before it returns to America. It goes into slaves in various tribes, the exchange rate for Native Americans for Black slaves (2:1), slavery in the Northwest territory (dating back to at least 1500 BCE), the social status levels in Native American tribes, voluntary slavery, Russian involvement, child slavery, white captive slaves, the involvement of the British, Dutch, French, Dutch and Spanish in slavery and the fact that there are still forms of slavery going on.

The book also has online resources and a for further reading section.

(That any human being can be taken and sold into slavery is something that goes back thousands of years and it was as disgusting then as it is today.)

[New Beginnings]

Informative

The book felt a bit "choppy" and didn't flow well for me but it had a lot of information on a seldom discussed subject. Enslavement of Native People had been documented as far Bach as Columbus arrival when he initially enslaved people to act as translators and guides before taking them back to Spain. Yet even before then Native tribes were I evolved in taking captives who were then treated as slaves. Even blacks and Native Americans owning blacks, although uncommon was not unheard of. Informative read on a dark subject but part of history.

[Todd]

Very interesting info about slavery in North America from perspectives not often taught. I wish they would have gone into more detail on non-white slave owners in the American South, like this article: http://americancivilwar.com/authors/b...

[Maureta Bohon]

Eye opening book regarding slavery in the western hemisphere. Starting with the Spanish explorers who took Aztec captives to Spain and sold them as servants. Indentured servants from England, Native American slaves and Africans who were brought over in the West Indies slave trade.

[Rich Leighton]

Holy smokes! What an eye-opener! This is the kind of stuff that should be taught in schools instead of revisionist history.

[Don]

Informative.

[Angela Stubbs]

A brief history of the slave trade.

[Ray]

This AI?