Indian Slavery in Colonial America (review)

The facts of Indian slavery in America have been long ignored and obscured. Indian Slavery in Colonial America aims to uncover details of this painful subject long after the fact. The collection focuses on Indian slavery above Mexico during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and is edited and introduced by Alan Gallay, an established scholar of early American history. The book's eleven authors contribute original research, offer valuable insights, and discuss such issues as how Indian labor was used, how colonists were able to purchase and possess Indian bodies despite numerous laws against the practice, and the interconnections between trade in Indian slaves and colonial development. As these authors clearly show, Europeans enslaved hundreds of thousands of American Indians during the colonial period. Some of the questions they address are: how did Indian slavery differ across time and space, and what roles did individuals and governments, both Indian and colonial, play in the Indian slave trade?

In his introduction, Gallay makes the valid point that slavery was seen as natural and moral in most parts of the world during the period. Slavery was ubiquitous among American Indian groups prior to the influx of Europeans, for example, although it differed markedly in scale, cause, and effect from that engaged in by colonists. Slavery within Indian societies typically involved humiliating one's enemies by demanding labor without recompense and removing small numbers of individuals from kin networks. In contrast, European colonists sometimes enslaved entire groups and practiced chattel slavery, in which a slave's labor and reproductive capacity were owned in perpetuity and slave status was heritable. Colonial trade in Indian slaves was often engaged in for the purpose of raising capital, which tended to result in harsher conditions further from the slave's place of origin. In addition, many colonial officials and traders ignored their own laws and those of the crown to engage in slaving activities considered reprehensible in their own society, in order to wrest the greatest profit for themselves.

In addition to providing facts about when, where, and how many Indians were enslaved by colonists during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, each chapter addresses the central question of the connections between the enslavement of Indians and the socioeconomic development of the colonies. One obvious connection is that enslaving Indians gave colonists greater control of populations who might otherwise object to their use of land and resources. And, while enslaving Indians provided necessary labor during extended shortages, shipping large numbers of Indians to the West Indies and Europe provided a means of ridding the colonies of hostile enemies. The transatlantic trade in Indian slaves was also lucrative. Thus, although the trade was at times used to avoid war, it was also an incentive to war, as colonists engaged in or incited conflicts for the purpose of obtaining slaves for trade. As a result, more Indian slaves were shipped to Europe and the West Indies, from where they rarely returned, than were kept in the colonies as servants and laborers.

The authors in this collection show how common Indian slave labor and service was throughout the colonies. Indian slavery was ubiquitous in Virginia, for example, during both centuries, according to C.S. Everett, previous scholarship to the contrary. But the greatest change to the region was wrought by the transatlantic trade in Indian slaves. Gallay notes that in South Carolina, for example, where Indian slaving was particularly lucrative for traders, colonists vastly expanded an existing trade, allying with Indians of one group to capture those of another for trade. Slaving by Indians had been uncommon prior to colonization; though Indians warred with each other and enslaved some of their enemies for revenge, few went to war solely to obtain slaves. All of this changed, particularly in the South. As trade with Europeans geared up, hostilities and alliances between and among Indian tribes shifted. Some tribes were wiped out and others prospered as each strove to protect their people from capture, often enslaving others for sale to the...