THE discussion of the use of Indians as slaves by the aborigines within the present limits of the United States, both before and after the coming of the Europeans, may be prefaced by the statement that the institution of slavery in some form was practically universal. Certain tribes held slaves more generally than others, and various tribes were more subject to enslavement than others, according to their relative strength and weakness.¹ Yet nowhere in the territory under discussion did slavery exist on such an extensive scale that some tribes held others in a state of subjection and demanded servile labor from them.

     Slavery among the tribes of the Great Plains and the Atlantic Slope was different in nature from that in the northwest. Frequent mention of such slavery is found, but it has been shown that the term “slave” was often used by the early Spanish and French writers in an erroneous sense as synonymous with “prisoner.”² The institution of adoption so largely used by the American Indians, and incident to intertribal warfare and the consequent depletion of the tribal numbers, has also been confused by the writers with the institution of slavery.³

Though slavery, in the strictest sense, was not general in the territory above mentioned, yet some form of the institution is recorded as having existed among the leading tribes. In the discussion which follows, the term “slave” must, then, be considered in its broadest sense. A prisoner held by his captor as an inferior and forced to labor for him, or sold into servitude or freedom for the financial benefit of his captor, will be considered a slave when thus treated by the Indians, as he will be so considered in a later discussion when thus treated by the whites.

     Among the Aztec Indians of Mexico outcasts and criminals of the tribe were enslaved,¹ and the usage appears to have been followed, to a very slight extent, by Indians in the area of the French and English colonies to the northward.²

     Individual instances of slavery proceeded from other causes. The Indians were inveterate gamblers, and when nothing else was left, both men and women not infrequently staked themselves to serve as slaves in case of loss. Such slavery was sometimes for life, and sometimes for such short periods of time as a year or two.³ In case of famine, the Indians even sold their children to obtain food.⁴

     The slaves possessed by a given Indian tribe were oftener

obtained through barter with other tribes. This intertribal traffic, though probably not common, was evidently far-reaching.¹ Owing to the wandering habits of the Indians and their custom of bartering goods with other tribes, articles of copper became distributed throughout the Northwest, especially in Wisconsin. The Illinois Indians possessed slaves who came from the sea coast, probably Florida.² The Illinois also bartered their slaves with the Ottawa for guns, powder, kettles and knives,³ and with the Iroquois to obtain peace.⁴ Marquette found (1673) among the Arkansas Indians, knives, beads and hatchets which had been obtained partly from the Illinois and partly from the Indians farther to the east.⁵ The Jesuit, Grelon, relates that in Chinese Tartary he met a Huron woman whom he had known in America.⁶

     The transition from the method of obtaining slaves by actual warfare and barter to that of mere slave raids was an easy one. The desire to gain the reputation of a skillful hunter, and, still more, of a brave warrior, and thus to win the esteem and regard of his tribesmen, was inherent among the natives. To be a brave warrior was to be truly a man. So eager was the Indian to acquire the name of “brave” that he unhesitatingly underwent any hardships

to obtain slaves or scalps as a proof of his qualifications for the title.¹ This means of obtaining slaves was used by the stronger tribes like the Illinois and the Iroquois.²

     The slaves bartered by the Illinois were generally taken in the territory beyond the Mississippi.³ This the Illinois were better able to do after the coming of the whites, as they were provided with guns, while the Indians to the westward had no weapons of the sort. One of the chief sources from which these slaves was obtained was the Pawnee nation. In 1719, Du Tisné wrote to Bienville, the commandant at New Orleans, that the Pawnee were afraid of him when he arrived among them, as their neighbors, the Osage, had made them believe that his intention was to entrap and enslave them.⁴

     The same practice was followed by the other northern tribes. La Jeune, in 1632, found slaves among the Algonquin. The Indians of the Great Lakes region had a young Esquimaux as a slave in 1646.⁵ Tonti found Iroquois slaves among the Huron and Ottawa.⁶ The Dutch navigator,

Hendrickson, in 1616, found the Indians of the Schuylkill River country holding Indian slaves.¹

     Of all the northern Indians, the Iroquois were by far the most powerful. They were the enemies, in the time of the early French explorations and settlements, of the Huron and the Illinois, and from these tribes they took many captives whom they enslaved. The statement has been made that no personal slavery ever existed among the Iroquois—that their captives were either killed or adopted as a part of the nation.² Quite the contrary is true. They held both Indians and whites in personal slavery. They brought back from the Ohio country bands of captives, sometimes numbering three or four hundred.³ They preyed upon the Shawnee and carried them off into slavery.⁴ They captured and enslaved the Miami for whose redemption they were presented with quantities of beaver skin. These they received but failed to free the slaves.⁵ They brought home slaves from Maryland and the south,⁶ and from the land of the “Chat”⁷ (the Erie). It was the Iroquois (the Seneca), called by an early writer “Sonnagars,” who enslaved captives taken from the tribes of Carolina and Florida.⁸

     Similar practices are related of the southern Indians. The Virginia tribes possessed “people of a rank inferior to the commons, a sort of servants . . . called black boys, attendant upon the gentry.”¹ When Menendez founded St. Augustine in 1565, he discovered in a native village the descendants of a band of Cuban Indians who had come to the mainland, been taken prisoners by the Florida Indians, and reduced to slavery.²

     In the south the strongest tribes were the Choctaw and Chickasaw. These two tribes were not only at war with each other from time to time, but each preyed upon the weaker tribes of the surrounding country. In 1717, a Cadodaquiou chief informed La Harpe, on his journey to the Nassoni northwest from Natchitoches, that the Chickasaw had killed and enslaved their nation until it was then very small, and that the remnant had been forced to take refuge among the Natchitoch and Nassoni.³

     The Choctaw enslaved the Choccuma, a small tribe lying between them and the Cherokee,⁴ and about 1770 captured and burned their village. The chief and his warriors were slain, and the women and children became the slaves of the conquerors.⁵ The Pima of the present southern Arizona took their slaves chiefly from the ranks of the Apache and their allies, and in some degree from the Yuma. These

captives were largely children. When not killed they were enslaved. Some of them were kept within the tribe, and were even permitted to marry members of the tribe. But their origin was never forgotten, and the innate superstition of the natives found expression in the declaration of the medicine men that disasters and misfortunes came to the tribe through the presence of these aliens.¹

     In 1540, Mendoza stated that the Pueblo Indians kept their captives for food and for slaves.² In the same year, Coronado, on his journey to Cibola, found among the Indians he met an Indian slave who was a native of the country that Soto traversed.³

     When Du Tisné, in 1719, made his journey west of the Mississippi River, he found the Osage at peace with the Pawnee and at war with the Kansas, Padouca, Aricara and other tribes, who in turn preyed on the Pawnee.⁴ The Pawnee were common prey to the tribes on both sides of the Mississippi River. Their nation was not especially small in numbers,⁵ but they appear to have been lacking in certain warlike qualities with which some other nations, as the Illinois and Iroquois, were more generously endowed. On this account they were so generally enslaved by their enemies that the term “Pawnee” became synonymous with

Indian slave.¹ In 1724, de Bourgmont found the Kansas Indians employing Padouca slaves.² De Boucherville, also, on his journey from the Illinois country to Canada, 1728-1729, took with him a little slave for the governor-general of Canada, and was offered other slaves as gifts by the Indians whom he encountered.³

     In a letter written at Quebec, October 1, 1740, the Marquis de Beauharnois speaks of the Huron bringing slaves from the Flathead and delivering them up to the Outaouac (Ottawa).⁴ La Verendrye, in 1741, was told by the Horse Indians that the Snake Indians had destroyed seventeen of their villages, killed the warriors and women, and carried off the girls and children as slaves.⁵

     Of the Wisconsin tribes, the Ottawa and Sauk, at least, were in the habit of making captives of the Pawnee,⁶ Osage, Missouri, and even of the distant Mandan, whom they consigned to servitude. The Menominee did not usually engage in these distant wars, but they, and probably other tribes, had Pawnee slaves whom they purchased of the Ottawa, Sauk and others who had captured them. For the sake of convenience, they were called “Pawnees,” though

some of them were certainly from the Missouri tribes. These captives were usually children.¹

     “Beginning with the Tlingit, slavery as an institution,” using the term in its strictest sense, “existed among all the Northwest coast Indians as far as California. It practically ceased with southern Oregon, although the Hupa of Athapascan stock, and the Nozi (Yanan), both of northern California, practiced it to some extent.”² Slavery in some form appears to have existed among both the Klamath and the Modoc, and in the Columbia River district as far as the Wallawalla River, where it existed among the Cayuse and the Nez Percés.³ “The Northwest region, embracing the islands and coast occupied by the Tlingit and Haida, and the Chimmesyan, Chinookan, Wakashan, and Salishan tribes, formed the stronghold of the institution.”⁴ Toward the eastward the institution became modified, as has been shown.

     According as an Indian nation proved friendly or unfriendly, the whites used it for their own advantage. Originally the slaves consisted almost entirely of captives taken in war, for there was but little trade among the different nations and tribes until articles of commerce were given by the whites in return for furs and slaves. How the traffic in slaves was affected is seen in the case of the Choctaw and

the Chickasaw, the former friends of the French, the latter, of the English. The ill feeling of the two nations was nourished by the international rivalry of their white allies to whom the Indians disposed of many of their captive slaves.¹ The Spaniards of Mexico made slave raids and induced the Indians to do so. La Salle’s expedition, found abundant evidence in 1687 of Spanish trade among the Cenis Indians, in their possession of pieces of money, silver spoons, lace, clothes and a bull from Rome exempting the Spaniards in Mexico from fasting during the summer.² Some messengers of the Chouman among the Cenis, and the Cenis themselves, told the French of the slave raids and of the cruel treatment of the Indians by the Spaniards to the southward.³

     Even the Jesuits were not averse to stirring up tribe against tribe. So strong was their interest in the Huron that, for the advancement of the Jesuit cause, it was felt advisable to break up the Iroquois power. Even La Salle advised such a course of action, and urged that the French strengthen the southern Indians by supplying them with firearms and in other ways, so that they might be enabled to defeat the Iroquois, destroy their organization, and carry off their women and children as slaves.⁴

     On the other hand, since the Huron were the friends of

the French and had been largely converted by the French missionaries, the Jesuits sought to better the lot of the Huron slaves held by the Iroquois,¹ and sent an earnest appeal to the Christians in France to contribute funds for the redemption of the Christian captives.² Hennepin’s Narrative tells of an attempt made by the Jesuits in 1681 to free some Ottawa Indians who were slaves among the Iroquois, by gifts of wampum belts, and by telling the Iroquois that these Ottawa were the children of the governor of the French, and that by holding them they were making war on the French.³

     The employment to which the Indian slave was put by his Indian owner depended largely upon the section in which the tribe resided. Their use as domestic servants was probably common. Father Fremin tells of a young Iroquois woman who possessed more than twenty personal slaves, whose duty it was to get wood, draw water, cook, and do all other services which their mistress might direct. On the death of the owner who was a Christian, her mother desired that the missionary instruct a sick slave in his religion, so that after death the slave might attend her former mistress in Heaven and perform the same services for her as she had done on earth.⁴ Among the Illinois, La Hontan found that two hours after sunset, the slaves covered the fires in the lodge before going to rest.⁵ Bartram mentions a southern chief, who had attending him as slaves many

Yamasee captives who had been captured by him when young.¹

     Le Jenne found the Huron and Ottawa Indian slaves engaged in minor household duties.² In the northwest, enslaved women and children performed the same labor.³ One other use to which the young women and girls were put, if they did not marry into the tribe, was to serve as the mistresses of their owners.⁴

     All the tribes east of the Mississippi River and south of the St. Lawrence River and the Great Lakes practiced agriculture to some extent. They all raised corn, beans, squashes and melons.⁵ Consequently the captive slaves worked in the fields with the members of the tribe, caring for the maize and vegetables. The Iroquois used their captives in tilling the fields.⁶ Captain John Smith, in speaking of Powhatan’s tribe, states that they made war, “not for lands and goods, but for women and children, whom they put not to death, but kept as captives, in which captivity they were made to do service.”⁷ A part of this service consisted in caring for the crops. The Indians of North Carolina kept their slaves at work in the fields.⁸

Soto found that the Indians among whom he passed had many foreign slaves whom they employed in tilling the ground.¹ Among the Illinois, La Hontan found the women slaves employed in sowing and reaping.²

     Slaves were also employed in mining, hunting, fishing, and whatever menial tasks needed to be done about the camp. But few of the tribes worked mines to any extent, yet Joutel, 1687, found the Cenis Indians working slaves in their mines.³ Hunting and fishing were more important occupations, since they furnished food for the tribe. Among the Iroquois,⁴ Huron,⁵ Ottawa,⁶ and Illinois,⁷ such work was partly done by the slaves who often worked with their masters. In the northwest the slave assisted his master in paddling, fishing and hunting. He cut wood, carried water, aided in building houses, etc.⁸

     The existence of barter or trade among the different tribes, and among individuals of the same or different tribes, as a means of obtaining slaves has been already noted. Hence it follows that slaves, along with wampum, furs, etc., served as a medium of exchange in trade. Furthermore, they served as gifts or objects of barter whereby captives belonging to the possessor’s tribe might be obtained, and by which an unfriendly tribe or individual might be placated. They were given to the whites to win their favor and

friendship.¹ This use of slaves to purchase peace with a stronger tribe was noted by Tonti in the case of the Illinois and Iroquois. The Illinois were too weak to cope with the Iroquois on a certain occasion owing to their young men being away at war, and so by the gift of beaver skins and slaves they were able to arrange a peace.² Dubuisson, the French commander in the war of 1712 between the French and allied Indians, and the Ottogami and Mascouten, records a similar use made of their slaves by the Indian allies of the French as a means of appeasing the Potawatami for an old quarrel.³ From the area about Green Bay in the present State of Wisconsin, De Lignery wrote in 1724 of bringing the warring tribes to an amicable settlement through an interchange of slaves.⁴ Other French commanders in the same section used the same means to regain peace. Not only to each other, but to whites as well, were slaves given in order to make reparation for losses in war. In 1684, the Indians offered Du Lath slaves to take the place of some assassinated Frenchmen.⁵ In 1724, the Indians at Detroit offered the French commander, by way of truce, two slaves for the same purpose.⁶ When slaves were desired for such use, if the tribe possessed none, a raid was often made upon an enemy in order to obtain them. At the time of certain disturbances around Detroit, the Indians in the peace arrangements promised the French that

they would make raids on distant nations to obtain slaves whom they would deliver to the French allies to replace their dead.¹

     The treatment of slaves depended upon the individual owner, whose disposition and mood might vary from kindliness to extreme cruelty according to circumstances or caprice, and, still more largely, upon custom. In the northwest slavery had existed for a sufficient length of time before the coming of the whites to modify materially the habits and institutions of the people. It doubtless produced the ideas of rank and caste so generally found among the Indians of that section, but so little known elsewhere among the American Indians.² Nevertheless the slaves among the Indians of the northwest were not, as a class, considered any more inferior to their owners than the slaves of the tribes farther east where adoption was more generally practiced. Consequently servitude in that section was of a rather mild type.³ The same appears to have been true of servitude in general among the Indians. Slaves were probably not generally neglected or abused.⁴ Yet there are many testimonials of cruel treatment. Travelers spoke of the slaves of the southern Indians serving and waiting on their masters with signs of the most abject fear, as tame, mild and tractable, without will or power to act but as directed by their masters.⁵ The slave was expected to obey his master blindly and without disputing.⁶ In this connection

it must be understood that enslavement of captives in war was in itself a kindly act on the part of the captors, determined partly by the need of laborers and additional members in the tribe, partly by the use which the victors could make of these captives in traffic with other tribes and with the whites, and partly by mere whim. Otherwise, the prisoners were tortured and killed as an expression of hatred, or as a means of obtaining revenge for injury. To instil fear into them, slaves were often compelled to observe the torture of their fellow captives who were condemned to death. La Salle relates an instance in which slaves were forced to eat one of their own nation, a victim of such torture.¹ Among the Cenis such a custom was followed, and it is quite possible that this method of producing subjection was consistent with the habitual cruelty of most tribes.

     Precautions were taken to prevent the escape of slaves. The southern Indians were accustomed to mutilate the feet of their slaves either by cutting away a part of the foot, or by cutting the nerves and sinews just above the ankle or instep. The slave was thus prevented from running rapidly, and if he should escape, the tracks of his mutilated feet were easily recognizable.²

     The life or death of Indian slaves depended upon either the council or the women.³ The captives were apportioned by the council to different individuals of the tribe, usually at the request of the women, who often preferred to adopt captives into their families to replace lost husbands and

sons, rather than to revenge themselves for the loss of relatives by demanding the torture and death of the slaves.¹ After such distribution, the life or death of a slave depended entirely upon the will of the owner. Among a barbarous people, a slave’s life naturally had but little value. Sick and useless slaves were often put to death,² and trivial faults might be punished in the same way. The Jesuit missionaries said of the Iroquois: “When a barbarian has split the head of his slave with a hatchet, he says, ‘It is a dead dog-there is nothing to be done but to cast it upon the dung hill’.”³

     On the other hand, the Jesuits record certain instances of kindness shown to slaves by the Iroquois and other tribes.⁴ One important difference existed between the Indian slavery as practiced by the Indians themselves, and that in existence among the whites. Among the Indians the question of social equality did not determine the relation of the slave to the master. The Indian slaves were always considered eligible for adoption into the tribes as actual members, in order to replete the numbers reduced by war, famine, disease or other cause.⁵ Among the Iroquois certain chosen slaves married into the tribe and became heads of families after the death of their owners. They led a tolerably easy life, but were still considered as slaves, and had no voice, either active or passive, in the public

councils.¹ Still others, who had been the richest and most important in their own villages, received no reward from their masters except food and clothing.² A certain amount of liberty seems to have been accorded these slaves, for the Jesuits were allowed to work among them sometimes as openly as among the members of the tribe.³ Bartram found that among the southern Indians the slaves were dressed better than their owners, and were allowed to marry among themselves; but they remained slaves for life.⁴

     There were several ways by which Indian slaves could obtain their freedom. Among the Huron a young brave could marry his mother’s slave, and his parents had no right to hinder him. By becoming his wife the slave became a free woman.⁵ Among the southern Indians the children of slave parents were free and were considered in every respect equal to their parents’ masters.⁶ Among the western Indians, upon the death of a savage, his slaves intermarried with others of their kind and lived in a separate but as a sign that they were free since they had no master to serve. The children of such marriages were adopted into the tribe and became the children of the nation, since they were born in the country and village of the tribe. The Indians believed that the children should not be held as slaves since they “contributed nothing to their creation.”⁷ In the northwest, the distinction between slave and free

man was generally sharply drawn with regard to marriage, for the slave usually could not marry the free man or woman, though the Makah men frequently married slave women. The children of such marriages appear to have held “an equivocal position between free men and slaves.”¹

     The most common mode of acquiring freedom was through adoption into the tribes. Among the tribes of the Great Plains and the Atlantic Slope, adoption seems to have been universally practiced. The slaves adopted usually consisted of war captives,² who in some instances were adopted wholesale, or who, after a period of servitude in the tribe, had proved themselves possessed of certain desirable qualities, such as bravery and strength in war or the chase. The adopted person became in every respect the peer of his fellow-tribesmen. If he showed his ability he might become of high rank in the tribe. If he were a poor hunter, a poor provider, or, above all, if he turned out to be a coward, he was despised and treated according to his demerits, probably worse than if he had been born a member of the tribe. Still, he was a member of the tribe and remained a free man, though he was deposed from a man’s estate and “made a woman.” Adopted persons who showed little ability, were sometimes made to serve in the families of the influential and prominent men of the tribe; but such persons were free, even though they performed menial labor.³

     In some sections, a captive could not become a member

of a tribe without a relationship of some sort; and to obtain this, he had to be adopted by a woman as her child.¹ The captive took the kinship name under the fiction that he was “younger” to every living person of the tribe at the time, and that all persons subsequently born were “younger” to him. If the captive belonged to a tribe of hereditary enemies who had from time immemorial been designated by opprobrious terms, such as cannibals, liars, snakes, etc., it might be that the captive was doomed to perpetual “younger brotherhood,” and could never exercise authority over any person within the tribe, though such person might have been born after the adoption of the captive. Usually, though not invariably, the captives adopted were children. They might ultimately become useful members of the tribe, and by their virtues even win rank in kinship. A captive might thus pass from slavery to freedom.²

     Occasionally the settlement of intertribal difficulties resulted in the freeing of the captives by the victors, with permission to return to their former homes. Such freedom might be given to a whole tribe that had been conquered,³ or to single individuals. In either case the stigma of disgrace attached to the condition of slavery still remained, and leaders of the tribe were preferably chosen from those who had never been slaves.⁴ Exchange or ransom was common. If a tribe declared war against another formally, which happened but rarely, slaves were sent with the notification of such fact to the enemy, and were given their freedom if they promised not to take up arms against their

former masters.¹ Freedom was given for performing certain services against their masters’ enemies, such as influencing their own tribe against such enemies.²

     In concluding this account of the institution of slavery among the Indians of the present United States it should be stated that no attempt has been made to treat the subject in detail. The purpose of the chapter is to show the existence of slavery and something of its nature, so as to obtain an historical setting for the discussion of the enslavement of the Indians by the whites which is to follow. Relatively few of the Indian tribes have been mentioned, but these covered sufficient territory to show that the custom of slave-holding was practically universal.³ The familiarity

of the Europeans who came to America with the institution of slavery, and the finding of the same custom among the Indians themselves, make their carrying on of the practice quite natural.¹