The Other Slavery - Indian Slavery in the Americas

[packman]

"less well known or familiar are the institution and systems established in the New World by the Spanish, initially, right on down to Americans in the West, largely during the course of Manifest Destiny in the 19th century, lasting approximately four hundred years"


" attempts ... to outlaw Indian slavery in their Empire (Spanish empire) were doomed by length of time in communication, distance, and self-interested efforts at interpreting, as slaveholders saw fit, protests and outright evasion of the laws by those in authority.

As well, selling those enemies captured by Indian tribes as slaves was also a tradition, one to which the newly arrived Europeans were more than happy to acquiesce in order to convert Indians to Christianity and to fill the demand for labor in agriculture, trades, and especially mining gold and silver.

The institution in Mexico and the rest of the Spanish Empire evolved over the centuries as outright buying and selling of humans to be replaced by the purchase of forced, long term labor by way of conviction for (mostly trifling) crimes and debt peonage where any debt of the father would continue to hold his descendants in thrall.

Even with Mexico’s independence and emancipation of all slaves and disenfranchised, there was the usual resistance and lip service paid to the law. The drain on the Indian population continued apace, made even more drastic over the years by the deaths of many to diseases, introduced by Europeans, to which they had no resistance or immunity.

With the arrival of more and more Anglo-Americans in Texas and the far Southwest, a new front of sorts was opened and the usual methods of servitude were maintained, especially following the Mexican-American War. In California, in particular, enslavement was seen as a way of accumulating wealth and attaining a life of leisure as well as reducing the numbers of those who were seen as little more than vermin standing in the way of progress."

In spite of the Emancipation Proclamation and resulting postwar amendments to the Constitution ending slavery and providing civil rights, Indians were left out of any protections and not even considered U.S. citizens by act of Congress until the 1920s.


http://www.nyjournalofbooks.com/book-review/slavery

[JustAnotherGen]

1. No in my family

My father knew his great grandmother who was a Seminole Slave in Alabama. We absorbed her into our family (black) in all census data post civil war - because she married a black man.

[Judi Lynn]

3. It's good to know at least some part of her life was spent with loved ones, at last.

Seminole people weren't spared from the atrocities, either, of the US Government which pursued persecution and murder of Native Americans throughout Florida, as well.

It's good to know she found a home with your great grandfather.

[JustAnotherGen]

4. He came back for her

After the Civil War - Great Great. He'd been a slave on the same plantation in Alabama and ran. She's in the slave narratives FDR commissioned.

Those of us who had families that took a stand in the South tend to have better records. Especially when our ancestors were land owners.

We still own the land and it is farmed by an aunt and her children to this day we were slaves on.

All because one man ran.

[Blue_Tires]

2. kick