Native Slaves
The initial concept was to use Natives as indentured servants working under the threat of assault and death.
The Spanish were the first to enslave American Natives. In the United States, their enslavement began shortly after the settlement of Jamestown in 1607. The initial concept was to use them as indentured servants working under the threat of assault and death. As seen in the piece “Captive Indians Sold into Slavery,” English settlers sold Native slaves amongst themselves or to Spanish colonists, often to barter for goods. The piece, “An Indian Sent to Slavery,” presents evidence that many military officials “offered a price for every Indian” captured during times of war. From 1680 to 1690, there were more enslaved Indians than Africans. At times, some Native tribes captured and sold Indians from other tribes to whites to avoid capture and enslavement themselves. In some cases, they traded an Indian slave for guns to protect themselves from war from different tribes and hostile Whites looking to capture and enslave them.
Native children were in high demand for the slave market.
The United States government outlawed the owning of Indian slaves several times throughout history. However, politicians overturned the laws and many ignored those in place, selling millions of Native people. Slave traders collected Natives as prisoners, as seen in the “Group Portrait of the Native American Prisoners,” and later sold them as slaves. The enslavement of whole tribes and families occurred. Native children were in high demand for the slave market. Requests for them to serve Whites under the pretense that they were being educated and converted was common. By 1649 two laws forbid the selling of Native children as slaves or keeping them as servants after the age of twenty-five. Yet, the enslavement continued, and Indian parents refused to send their children to English households or schools out of fear. Forced against their will, Indian children attended boarding schools across the United States in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Many children never returned to their parents. In the late 1900s and early 2000s the world watched in horror as the United States discovered mass graves of Indigenous children.