The Forgotten Slave Trade: The White European Slaves of Islam

by (Historian) Simon Webb

On the other side of the world, in North and South America, the same general principle was followed, that captured enemies from other countries or cultural groups were seen as being natural candidates for slavery. The Maya followed this rule (Coe & Houston, 2015), as did the Aztecs and also the tribes of North America. In Alaska there lived two tribes who were very energetic and enthusiastic slave traders, whose raids extended all the way along the Pacific coast as far south as California. The Haida and Tlingit tribes both had fearsome reputations and routinely carried off men and women, taking them back to Alaska as slaves. The children of slaves also became slaves, unlike the situation in some American tribes, where children born to slaves might become full members of the tribe. As a result, in some parts of the North-West Pacific coast, a quarter of the population were slaves (McDonald, 1996). Long before the importation of African slaves to North America, slavery was flourishing among the indigenous inhabitants of the continent.