Captives and Cousins: Slavery, Kinship, and Community in the Southwest Borderlands (review)

This remarkably well-written and broadly researched book boldly sets out to revise all previously held notions about the role of slavery in the American Southwest. To do so, the author has constructed a theoretical framework that examines an "intercultural exchange network treated here as a borderland political cultural economy" (p. 363). Of paramount importance to the functioning of this network were the principal items of exchange: women and children. Thus, this work is also an exploration of gender and class in Native American and Hispanic societies in the American Southwest, as seen through the prism of violence, from the time of Spanish contact until the late nineteenth century.

Although this work addresses issues that had repercussions throughout the Southwest, the focus is squarely on New Mexico. Scholars of New Mexico have generally avoided the question of slavery. When it has been explored, the emphasis has been on the Spanish enslavement of Native Americans, particularly Athapaskan peoples, as forced laborers in the mines of northern New Spain. Such studies usually point out that such slavery was illegal under Spanish law, except for those slaves taken in a "just war"—a fine point stretched beyond all recognition by typically venal provincial governors. Acknowledgment that Native Americans were also actively involved in slavery usually comes only in the context of a discussion of the genízaros. This fascinating group is most often described in the scholarly literature as detribalized nomadic Indians. Brooks goes even further, indicating that they were "reduced to slavery, converted, and resettled in Spanish homes and deployed as military auxiliaries" (p. 374). Doubtless, many genízaros fit this model. Documentary evidence strongly suggests, however, that New Mexicans also frequently used the term more generally to mean Indians of mixed tribal parentage.

Captives and Cousins presents a creative rereading of the historiography that produces a new vision of slavery, kinship, and community; its fresh look at the sources leads to a completely new understanding of slavery in the region. Where previous scholars have looked primarily at Native Americans and Hispanics as occupying culturally distinct spheres, with only occasional points of contact, Brooks attempts to show that both peoples had much more in common, particularly with respect to their views on slavery. Indeed, slave raiding was practically institutionalized in both worlds. Women and children, as well as livestock, moved between societies by the thousands. Moreover, Brooks demonstrates that the concept of slavery embraced myriad forms and degrees of servitude or coercion, in addition to highly nuanced gradations of adoption into the slaveholding society.

This work contributes to a significant debate regarding competition among Native American men over women, the accumulation of wealth and prestige, and the role of violence within that society. It fairly explodes the rosy view of peaceful, egalitarian Native Americans living alongside violent and insatiably acquisitive Europeans. This is pretty volatile stuff for Southwest historiography, but it will be familiar to the readers of this journal. Brooks expends considerable effort placing this book within the greater context of the overall history of slavery, with numerous references to the experience of the American South and even Africa. Except for passing references to Aztec and Maya ritualized slaving, however, the more apt context—that of Spain's Latin American empire—is lacking, and much is the pity. The author's observation that when natural resources were scarce or unevenly distributed among Indian groups, "customs of exogamous marriage and reciprocal adoption . . . that usually fostered intergroup exchange could shift to a violent and competitive commerce" (p. 366), could describe countless indigenous groups throughout Latin America during the colonial period. Specific comparisons with Latin America would have enriched this otherwise fine work. Still, this is a mere quibble. Captives and Cousins is a first-rate piece of scholarship that...