THE small number of the Indians within the territory actually occupied by the English had its influence upon both the extent and the decline of Indian slavery. The Indians were never as numerous in the English territory as in that occupied or claimed by the Spanish and French. From many estimates made of the Indian population in the section under English rule,¹ it would seem that the supply was sufficient to nourish the system of Indian slavery indefinitely; but it must be noted that the greater portion of this Indian population was made up of tribes generally remote from the English settlements.

     The consensus of opinion to-day is that the number of Indians in New England about the year 1600 was not greater than twenty-four or twenty-five thousand. This number was so much reduced by the plague of 1616,² that

Palfrey states that the English found practically a vacant domain.¹ In the Florida country many small tribes were so thoroughly exterminated before the coming of the whites that no trace of their existence remained except a few local names.² In the interior of the continent before the French or the English had obtained a foothold, the whole country during the seventeenth century was the seat of intertribal wars so disastrous in their results as to destroy many large and powerful tribes.³

     With the coming of the white races the decrease in the number of the Indians went on rapidly. Estimates show such to have been the case with the Indians of the North Atlantic coast during the first quarter of the eighteenth century.⁴ Bradford⁵ and Winthrop⁶ bear witness to the small number of the natives, and to the further decrease of that number after the coming of the whites. An early writer on New York declares: “There is now (1670) but few Indians upon the island and those few no ways hurtful. It is to be admired how strangely they have decreased by the hand of God, since the English first settling in these parts.”⁷ Oldmixon gives the number of Indian men in New York in 1708 as one thousand, “whereas there are seven or eight times as many English.”⁸ According to the

same authority, the number of Indians in New Jersey at the opening of the eighteenth century did not exceed two hundred.¹

     A decreased birth-rate was not the least important cause of this decrease in numbers throughout all the tribes. Following the advent of the whites in the new world, “sterility became the rule and not the exception”, where before the Indians were very prolific.² The natives, bond or free, seemed to possess a peculiar susceptibility to the diseases of the whites, and a lack of ability to withstand their effects. The Indians of the Delaware River country complained that during the sixteen years after the coming of the Swedes, their number had been much diminished, presumably by small-pox.³ In both North and South Carolina, the Indians were much afflicted by this same disease in early colonial days, one tribe being entirely swept away,⁴ another nearly exhausted,⁵ and still others much reduced in numbers.⁶ Owing to diseases and other causes the several tribes in Carolina at the opening of the eighteenth century were small, most of them not numbering more than fifty men each.⁷ Douglass recorded that the Spanish Indians captured at St. Augustine and brought to New England, soon died of consumption.⁸

     Dean Berkeley who repeatedly visited Narragansett to examine the conditions and character of the Indians of that locality, in his sermon before the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts at its anniversary in 1731, bears witness to such destruction in the following statement: “The native Indians, who are said to have been thousands within the compass of this colony, do not at present amount to a thousand, including every age and sect; . . . the English [having] contributed more to destroy their bodies by the use of strong liquors, than by any means to improve their minds or save their souls. This slow poison, jointly operating with the small-pox, and their wars, (but much more destructive than both), has consumed the Indians, not only in our colonies, but also far and wide upon our confine.”¹

     Intestine wars, often, as has been seen, fostered by the whites, resulted in great loss of numbers to the Indians, and sometimes even destroyed whole tribes. In consequence of a war between the Yoamaco Indians of Maryland and the Susquehanna, the former disappeared.² In Virginia, between 1609 and 1669, spirituous liquors, the small-pox, war and a diminution of territory reduced the tribes to one-third of their original number.³ During the next twenty years they had become so much weakened that three of their principal tribes were able to send to a great Indian congress only four representatives, including attendants. By the end of the next century all had perished, except three or four of one tribe, ten or twelve of another, and a few women only of a third.⁴

     By 1780 all the Indian nations of the territory settled by the English in the south were either extinct or had retreated westward and had united with the neighboring Cherokee and Creeks. At this time the Catawba were so reduced that they possessed but seventy or eighty men.¹ The Westo and Savannah were likewise reduced from many thousands to small numbers,² and the Corannine tribe was practically destroyed.³

     Another cause which contributed in a measure to the passing of Indian slavery was the amalgamation of the red and black slaves. Since intercourse and marriage of slaves were not generally interfered with by the whites, it was natural that the slaves of the red and black races should intermingle. Since, also, the Indians were generally in the minority, as well as inferior in power of resistance, their physical characteristics gradually disappeared, while those of the negro remained.

     By his very constitution, furthermore, the Indian seemed unfitted for servitude. He was highly susceptible to climatic changes, and unable to endure sustained labor. In his native condition he was accustomed at times to great tests of physical endurance, which, however, alternated with periods of rest and recuperation. Though authorities may differ as to the capacity of the Indian for civilization, the fact remains that civilization has only to a very small extent been assimilated by the red man. Taking into due consideration the treatment accorded him by the whites, the conclusion seems warranted that such lack of assimilation

is due in some measure to the inability of the Indian to develop beyond the stage which he had already reached when discovered by the Europeans. Furthermore, the dominant idea of Indian life was the love of liberty. Heredity and environment coöperated to make the Indian a creature opposed to all restraint when exercised by an exterior force.¹

     The general conclusion, therefore, so far as it can be determined by individual testimony, colonial legislative action and the comparative values of Indian and negro slaves, is that Indian slave labor within the territory under discussion was not, as a rule, satisfactory. Mason records that the captives distributed among the colonists as slaves at the close of the Pequot War “could not endure that yoke; few of them continuing any considerable time with their masters”.² Mayhew tells in 1690 of the tendency to run away shown by the Indian slaves of Massachusetts.³ Moses Marcy of Oxford, Massachusetts, had an Indian woman sold him by the general court prior to 1747. In that year he was discharged from his bond, she having “made way with herself after having tried to murder her mistress . . . run off and not heard from since”.⁴ It is stated that the Indian female slaves of New England could not be taught to sew, to wash clothes, or to render any valuable domestic service;⁵ and that the Indian slaves of Rhode Island “only

became efficient workmen under a stern and vigorous discipline”.¹ Sir Robert Mountgomry, who advocated in 1717 the establishment of a colony south of Carolina, urged the use of indentured white servants, so that there might be “no necessity to use the dangerous help of Blackamoors or Indians”.²

     The various laws, already discussed in another connection, and the numerous newspaper advertisements show Indian slaves to have been as much given to running away as their negro companions. In fact it seems not unlikely that they were more inclined toward trying to escape, for the possible chance of returning to their own people offered greater inducements for such an act than in the case of negroes.

     Indian slaves as well as negroes were implicated in the various slave disturbances which occurred from time to time in the different colonies. Though there seems no evidence that Indians were usually more instrumental than negroes in creating these disturbances, yet their not infrequent participation in such events tended to lower the colonists’ estimate of their value, and led to definite legislation seeking, by preventive measures and by decreeing severe punishments in case of conspiracies or uprisings, to avoid the danger which the colonists feared.

     Legislation regarding slave conspiracies and uprisings was general throughout the English colonies from an early date. In some of these acts Indian slaves were expressly mentioned. In others they were included by implication in the general term “slaves” or in the expression “negroes

and other slaves”. Reference will be made to only those acts which include Indian slaves by express mention. A South Carolina act of 1690 related to Indian and negro slaves striking a white person.¹ The Spanish Indians were evidently considered especially undesirable, for an act passed in 1722 stated that “the importation of Spanish Indians, mustees, negroes and mulattoes may be of dangerous consequence. . . .”² In 1703, Massachusetts passed “an act to prevent disorder in the night”. The preamble reads “whereas great disorders, insolences and burglaries are oftimes raised and committed in the night time by Indian, negro and mulatto servants and slaves. . . .”³ As late as 1769 Connecticut passed an act relating to any disturbance created by “any Indian, negro, or mulatto slave.”⁴ The murder by an Indian man slave and a negro woman of an entire white family in Queens County, New York, led to the passage of an act, October 30, 1708, to prevent the conspiracy of Indian and negro slaves.⁵ A Philadelphia ordinance, also, of July 3, 1738, dealt with “the tumultuous meetings and other disorderly doings of the negroes, mulattoes and Indian servants and slaves within the city”.⁶

     A second class of colonial laws related to Indian slaves alone and show that in certain of the colonies the inhabitants,

for definite reasons, feared the presence of too many Indian slaves among them. Such were the laws passed by the northern colonies at the time of the Tuscarora War, by which they sought by means of heavy duties to prevent the importation of such dangerous slaves.¹ The preamble of the Massachusetts act of 1713, for example, reads: “Whereas divers conspiracies, outrages, barbarities, murders, burglaries, thefts and other notorious crimes and enormities, at sundry times, and especially of late, have been perpetuated and committed by Indian and other slaves within several of her majestie’s plantations in America, being of a malicious, surley and revengeful spirit, rude and insolent in their behaviour, and very ungovernable, the over-great number and increase whereof within this province is likely to prove of pernicious and fatal consequences to her majestie’s subjects and interest here unless speedily remedied, and is a discouragement to the importation of white Christian servants, this province being differently circumstanced from the plantations in the islands, and having great numbers of the Indian natives of the country within and about them, and at this time under the sorrowful effects of their rebellion and hostilities. . . .”² The Connecticut act passed in August, 1715, likewise for the purpose of checking the importation of Indians into the colony, is a transcript of the Massachusetts act and shows that the colonists considered a large Indian slave element in the population to be quite as undesirable as did the people of Massachusetts.³ The New Hampshire act of 1717 cited as a reason for checking the importation of Indians: “the over-great number and increase of such slaves within the province is likely to prove

of fatal and pernicious consequences to her majesty’s subjects and interests here unless speedily remedied”.¹ The Rhode Island act of July 5, 1715, similarly was passed to prevent the importation of Indian slaves, because “divers conspiracies, insurrections, rapes, thefts, and other execrable crimes have been lately perpetrated in this and the adjoining colonies by Indian slaves, etc.”²

     Again, it seems not unlikely that the use of hired Indian servants may have had something to do with the passing of Indian slavery, though the influence was probably slight. Very early in the history of the northern colonies, Indians were employed for wages. The need for laborers could thus be partly met at very little cost. A Frenchman residing in Boston in 1687, records the wages of such servants who worked in the fields as “a shilling and a half a day and board which is eighteen pence”.³

     The number of such Indians employed was generally small. As a hired laborer the Indian was no more reliable or trustworthy than as a slave. The keeping of Indians in the colonists’ families was always considered to be more or less dangerous. Massachusetts, in 1631⁴ and Virginia, in 1661,⁵ required that all persons should get special licenses before employing Indians. In 1634, Winthrop and his son did so. Winthrop himself speaks of the “Indians which are in our families”,⁶ and

mention of his Indian servant is found in other connections.¹ As the colony grew stronger and the fear of the Indians passed away, other leading men of Massachusetts, such as Thomas Morton,² the Reverend Mr. Pariss,³ Isaac Addington, secretary of the Council of Safety in 1714,⁴ and John Eliot⁵ employed such servants. The law was repealed in 1646, “there being more use of encouragement thereto than otherwise.”⁶ That a similar employment of Indians existed in Plymouth is seen by the act of 1651 which shows the danger to the colony in providing such servants with firearms.⁷ The Praying Indians hired themselves to the whites.⁸ The New England whale fisheries employed hired Indians, at least from 1670 to 1680.⁹ During the publication of the New Testament in Massachusetts in 1661, and the translation of the New and Old Testaments and the Psalms into the Indian language by John Eliot in 1663, Green, the printer, was assisted in his work by an Indian apprentice.¹⁰ In Little Compton, Massachusetts, hired Indians were largely engaged in building stone fences.¹¹ In 1659 and 1660, the people of Connecticut were

employing the Mohegan Indians in agricultural labor,¹ and the use of hired Indians is reported in the colony in 1774.² By 1731 most of the Indians remaining in Narragansett were servants in families.³ The records also of Southampton, New York, show the employment of Indians for hire.⁴

     It was a part of the Puritan missionary scheme to win the heathen to Christianity by employing them in their homes where they might be brought into contact with the workings of the Christian religion. In this manner they hoped to bring the savages to a state preparatory to conversion.⁵ Something of the same purpose was intended by the early Virginia colonists. Hence, in 1619, their first legislative assembly ordered that every plantation should procure Indian youths by just means for this purpose.⁶ In 1774, the governor of Connecticut, in reply to various inquiries made by the home government regarding conditions in the colony, stated that there were then 1,363 Indians in the colony, and that many of them dwelt in English families.⁷ A similar statement was made in 1731 by Dean Berkeley to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts. He declared that nearly all the native Indians of Rhode Island were at that time servants or laborers for the English.⁸

     Some of the earliest of the indentured servants used in America, moreover, were Indians. Reference has already been made to the Massachusetts law of 1700 seeking to avoid the abuse of the custom. In 1674, Plymouth passed a law providing that both Indians who lived idly and those who did not pay their debts on conviction could be handed over to those to whom they were indebted or to others as bond servants.¹ The Southold town records mention Indian apprentices in 1678.² Indentured male and female Indians existed in Salem in 1685.³ Similar records of Indian apprentices and indentured servants exist for Rhode Island,⁴ Connecticut,⁵ New Jersey⁶ and New York.⁷ As a rule these bond servants were young, for they were then more easily trained and were more tractable and useful. In Virginia, in every agreement between Indian parents and whites, a covenant had to be entered into providing that the child be instructed in the Christian religion.⁸

     One of the most important causes for the passing of Indian slavery is found in the introduction of indentured white servants. Almost from the time of the earliest settlements these servants were an institution in the English colonies. Some of them were persons who entered voluntarily into temporary bond service to pay for passage to the new world.⁹ Some were prisoners of war.¹⁰ Others

were convicts sent into exile for punishment.¹ These white servants were so much desired by the colonists that requests were not infrequently sent to England for them.² To encourage their voluntary coming, the colonial authorities sometimes offered them special inducem[e]nts.³

     The number of such servants in the different colonies varied according to conditions in America and England. Naturally their number was greatest where their work was most needed.⁴ Whatever their condition before coming to America and whatever the reason for their coming,⁵ their productivity of labor, native intelligence and

acquaintance with the customs and observances of civilization made them more desirable than Indian servants. There were forces, also, urging them to go to America, and forces in America drawing them there. So, until the development of the traffic in negroes, and their consequent greater use, the indentured white servants were for a while perhaps the leading factor in the decline of Indian slavery.

     Another element that contributed greatly to the decline of Indian slavery was that furnished by negro slaves. The rapidly increasing number of negroes in each individual colony attested both the energy of trading companies and the desire of the colonies for the negro type of slave labor. Both indentured white servants and negro slaves, in fact, far outnumbered the Indian slaves. The sources from which the white servants and the negro slaves were drawn were well nigh inexhaustible, whereas the sources of Indian slavery were limited. From these limited sources, also, the colonists drew but in a small degree. White servants and negro slaves were obtained by peaceful means, but the acquisition of Indian slaves not infrequently meant danger to the colony. Behind the indentured white servants and the negroes there were powerful forces supplying them to the colonists in some cases even faster than they needed them. Both indentured white servants and negroes proved

more easily fitted to the life and work required of them by their masters, their labor was more productive and they were more easily controlled.

     Some idea of the relative values attached to Indian and negro slaves may be obtained by a comparison of the prices for which they were sold. In Massachusetts, for instance, record exists of the sale of an Indian man slave in Newbury, in 1649, for “the quarter part of a vessel”.¹ Sewall records that on July 1, 1676, nine Indians were sold for £30.² An inventory of 1690, on the other hand, appraised a single negro at £30.³ In the inventory of an estate in Ipswich, in 1683, “Lawrence ye Indian” was valued at £4.⁴ In the same town £5 was paid for an Indian boy and girl.⁵ The Reverend Mr. Thacher of Milton, in 1674, paid £5 down and £5 more at the end of the year for an Indian woman slave.⁶ An Indian girl brought £15 at Salem in 1710;⁷ whereas in the case of a cargo of negroes brought into Boston in 1727, as high as £80 was paid per head.⁸ In the settlement of an estate in Newbury, an Indian slave was valued at an early date at £20.⁹ In 1708, a South Carolina Indian boy was sold for £35.¹⁰ In 1713, a Spanish

Indian boy was sold in the same town for £38.¹ In 1725, a negro was sold in Newbury for £100, and three other negroes were valued at £132 6s. 8d. in colonial currency.² In 1708, an Indian was sold at Salem for £32.³ An Indian girl was sold in the same town in 1710 for £15.⁴ A negro was appraised in the same town at £40.⁵ In 1764, a negro woman was sold for £8 13s. 4d.⁶ In Byfield a negro was listed in the inventory of an estate in 1689 at £60.⁷ A negro given to Cotton Mather in 1706 was purchased at an expense of £40 or £50.⁸ An Indian boy was valued in Boston in 1721 at £20, and an Indian girl at £10.⁹

     In Rhode Island the prices of Indian slaves were lower than those already mentioned, for here the Indians were sold into slavery for limited periods only. The average price at which Indians “great and small” were sold in the colony, was about thirty-two shillings. Some of the lot brought into Rhode Island at the close of King Philip’s War sold for twelve bushels of Indian corn, some for £2 10s. in silver, some for 100 pounds of wool, one for three fat sheep, two for twenty-two bushels of Indian corn.¹⁰ One sold in 1677 at Portsmouth for £4 10s.¹¹ Indian slaves appear among other effects in the probate inventories.

They were appraised at £8 and £10 each, while negroes were valued at from £60 to £80,¹ with an average price of £50 for an able negro man and £40 for a woman.² That is, a negro laborer was reckoned as the equivalent of five or six Indians.³ In 1718, three Indian children were worth £23.⁴ An inventory in 1723 valued the two years and ten months’ service of an Indian girl at £5⁵

     The inventory of the estate of Gabriel Harris who died in 1684 in New London, Connecticut, contained the item: “An Indian maid servant, valued at £15.[”]⁶ An Indian slave of Wethersfield was appraised in 1662 at £24. A negress and child belonging to the same estate were at the same time appraised at £22.⁷ In Derby, Connecticut, an Indian woman, twenty-six years old, sold in 1722 for £60.⁸

     The inventory of a New Jersey estate, in 1714, included an Indian man valued at £11 5s.⁹ In another inventory, in 1725, an Indian woman was valued at £30.¹⁰. In 1711, an Indian woman and two children were valued at £100.¹¹ Similar inventories valued an Indian girl in 1696 at £30;¹²

an Indian woman in 1724 at £30;¹ an Indian boy in 1711 at £40;² . . . two Indian slaves in 1726 at £80; and two Indian slaves in 1730 at £50.³

     The account book of the executor of Thomas Smallcomb of York County, Virginia, 1646, contains the following items:⁴ “By two Indians sold by Sir William Berkeley, 600 lbs. By two Indians sold by Sir John Hammon, 500 lbs. By two Indians sold by Captain Thomas Petters, 600 lbs.” In the records of Surrey County, 1659, occurs the following deed: “Know all men by these presents, that I, King of Waineoakes, do firmly bargaine and make sale unto Eliz. Short, her heires, executors or Assignes a boy of my nacon, named Weetoppen, from the day and date herself untill the full terme of his life, in consideracon whereof I, the said Elizabeth Short, doth for myself, my heires, executors or Assignes ingage to deliver and make sale unto the above said kinge a younge horse foale, aged one yeare, in full satisfacon for above said boy to enjoy for her pper use forever. In witness thereof, wee ye above specified, have set our hands”.⁵

     The inventory of a North Carolina estate in 1693 valued a negro and his wife at £40, an Indian woman and her child at £15, and an Indian boy at £12.⁶ A bill of sale, March

5, 1711, shows an Indian between twenty and thirty-five years of age sold for £14.¹ In 1713, the council of North Carolina decreed that “King Blount” might have eight Indians to ship to the West Indies at £10 per head.² The average price for the Indian captives taken in the Tuscarora War and sold as slaves to the islands and the northern colonies appears to have been about £10 each.³

     A South Carolina law of 1719 states that an Indian slave was of much less value than a negro.⁴ The English of South Carolina, according to the French, were accustomed to pay (1714) the Indians fifteen pistoles for an Indian slave, while the French were able to purchase them for 115 livres.⁵ The English sold these slaves ordinarily for 300 or 400 livres.⁶

     A comparison of these prices paid for Indian slaves shows much variation at different times and places. In New England after the Indian wars the prices were low, for the chief object of the government was to get rid of the captives. In localities where the Indian’s labor was in greater demand the prices rose and appear to have been highest among the English of the southern colonies. When compared with sums paid for negroes at the same time and place, the prices of Indian slaves are found to have been considerably lower. In general the prices of slaves increased during the years preceding the Revolution, but the values of Indian slaves did not equal those of negro slaves.

     During the existence of Indian slavery, furthermore, there was never any general expression of opinion regarding it either in England¹ or America, nor are there many records of opinions expressed during the colonial period as to the right or wrong of enslaving the natives. The English colonists followed the Spanish custom of reducing the Indians to a condition of slavery, but neither the English colonists nor the English government heeded the example of the later policy of the Spanish government in looking upon Indian slavery as unjust and declaring it illegal.

     That personal opinions favorable or unfavorable to the enslavement of Indians were not more generally expressed is not altogether strange. The enslavement was not premeditated nor did it spring into sudden existence throughout the English colonies, but began here and there in various colonies at various times and for various reasons. The custom of enslavement came from the necessity of disposing of war captives, from the greed of traders and from the demand for labor. Individuals in the colonies, such as officials of high rank and church leaders, who would naturally be expected to express an opinion either for or against the custom, themselves held Indian slaves quite as a matter of course, and found no necessity for discussing their action. Nor did the possession and employment of Indian slaves ever become sufficiently extensive to present any of the problems which later attracted the attention of the people

and led to the opposition which overthrew negro slavery in several of the colonies, and incidentally, Indian slavery as well.

     Yet throughout the history of Indian slavery certain expressions of opposition to the system, usually mild in nature, occurred from time to time. In the English colonies there was never any such earnest opponent to Indian slavery as the Spaniard, Las Casas, who argued directly against the enslavement of Indians from the standpoint of the injustice of reducing the natives to such a condition. Most of the opposition expressed in the English colonies was aimed at some specific instance of harsh treatment or cruel punishment of which enslavement was an incident; or it arose during the later colonial period as a part of the antagonism to slavery in general; or, as was the case in South Carolina, it revealed the attitude of one faction of the government toward the actions of another faction, and was not at all concerned in abolishing the practice of enslaving Indians as such.

     The system adopted by Rhode Island at the time of King Philip’s War of using the captive Indians as involuntary indentured servants for short periods of years, was anticipated by the query expressed by Roger Williams in his letter to Governor Winthrop, September 18, 1637, as to whether the captive Indians whose lives were spared should not be retained in involuntary servitude for short periods of time and then be released.¹ This spirit of opposition to the enslavement of Indian captives for life, shown by Rhode Island during both the Pequot and King Philip wars, was somewhat out of harmony with the spirit of the tunes. But it should be noted that this opposition was not the expression o£ the entire colony, During the Pequot War it represented the feeling of the “Liberal Party” against the enslavement

of the captive Indians, and during King Philip’s War it resulted from the dominating influence of the Quaker element in the government.

     The opposition of John Eliot to the enslavement of Indians during King Philip’s War was similar to that shown by Roger Williams during the Pequot War, though perhaps it was prompted by a more nearly unselfish and humanitarian motive Throughout the war Eliot remonstrated strongly against selling the captive Indians into slavery. In a letter, June 13, 1675, to the governor and council at Boston, he stated his reasons for opposing the enslavement of the captives. He first urged a politic reason: that such enslavement was likely to prolong the war and bring still further disaster upon the land by rousing the Indians to renewed hostilities. He then emphasized the Christian attitude of mercy by asserting that it is the design of Christ “not to extirpate nations but to Gospelize them”. “To sell souls for money,” he continued, “seems to me a dangerous merchandise. To sell them away from all means of grace, when Christ has provided means of grace for them, is the way for us to be active in the destroying of their souls.” His plea for mercy was strengthened, also, by calling attention to the letters patent of the king which urged the Indians’ conversion rather than their destruction.¹

     Some faint opposition to the enslavement of Indians was expressed by Samuel Sewall of Massachusetts in 1706, called forth by an act passed by Massachusetts against Indians and negroes. Perhaps something was accomplished by the protest, though the act either failed to pass or was repealed, since no trace of it remains.²

     In 1729, Ralph Sandiford published a work entitled: “The Mystery of Iniquity in a Brief Examination of the Practice of the Times.” In the dedication of his book, he speaks of going to South Carolina, and of refusing the bounty of a rich colonist there because his riches had been obtained through the labor of negro and Indian slaves. He declares that negroes and Indians who are the Lord’s freemen cannot be slaves to Christians.¹ He further asserts that the matter he is aiming at is “this trading in mankind, which is pernicious to the Publick, but more especially to the common-wealth of Israel; which raised forth a zeal in Men for the House of the Lord, which would have even consumed men had not I witnessed against this rottenness and hypocrisy that would introduce itself amongst the saints, whereby, as way-marks, they lead many into the same corrupt practice which is contrary to the Principal of Truth, which is over the Heads of such Transgressors, that the Righteous in all Churches are undefiled with it, for their Bodies are the Temples of the Holy Ghost to dwell in, which they cannot defile with Babylon, who is Harloted from the Truth to feed upon the Flesh or receive nourishment from the blood of the poor Negro or Indian captive, or whomsoever ravenous Nature (which is the Beast’s work) has power to prey upon”.²

     Granville Sharp, in 1767, published in London a protest against slavery, in which he declared there could be no reasonable pretense for holding either negroes or Indians in slavery. In discussing the bringing about of a state of slavery

through contract he declared that “in such a case there would still remain a great suspicion that some undue advantage had been taken of the Indians’ ignorance concerning the nature of such a bond.” Slavery he declared a “shameless prostitution and infringement on the common and natural rights of mankind.” Every inhabitant of the king’s realm, regardless of color, he declared to be the king’s subject, and asserted that no one, therefore, had a moral or legal right to enslave any such subject.¹ If color were a basis for slavery, he argued, then in a short time any Englishman might be enslaved since there was but little difference between the complexion of a northern Indian and a white man.²

     Anthony Benezet, about 1750, began to express his opposition to slavery in the almanacs and newspapers of the day. After three separate publications dealing with slavery in general, he issued in 1784 a book entitled “Some Observations on the Situation, Disposition and Character of the Indian Natives of this Continent.” In this he refers to the kindness, hospitality and generosity of the Indians toward the English in the early days of trade, and laments the fact that “the adventurers from a thirst of gain overreached the natives”, so that the latter “saw some of their friends and relatives treacherously entrapped and carried away to be sold as slaves”.³

     Throughout the colonial period the Society of Friends showed more or less opposition to slavery, although the members of the Society held slaves. From 1688 a certain amount of agitation concerning the matter is apparent in the records of the various quarterly and yearly meetings

in Pennsylvania and the Jerseys. In the records of the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting for the year 1719, is found the first mention of Indian slaves made in the minutes of the Yearly Meeting. In that year, after an earnest admonition to Friends to refrain from selling, trading or exchanging in any way any spirituous liquors with the Indians, the Yearly Meeting voted: “And to avoid giving them occasion of discontent, it is desired, that Friends do not buy or sell Indian slaves.”¹ From the wording of the record it may be concluded that the basis for the Friends’ action was not the idea of any moral wrongdoing attached to the enslavement of Indians, but rather the possible harm that might come to the colony through the discontent which enslavement might cause among the free Indians. And, judging from the previous action of the Society taken with regard to slavery, it may also be concluded that this basis for the opposition to the trade in Indian slaves was used as a means of calling the immediate attention of its members to the matter, and that the reason for the opposition of the Meeting to trading in Indians was the same as that to negro slavery: “caution not censure”.²

     Some criticism was expressed in Massachusetts at the seizure of the Indians at Cocheco in 1676, and the subsequent transportation of part of the number captured by order of the government.¹ Such criticism, however, was not aimed at the action of the government in selling the Indians as slaves, but at the breach of faith in seizing Indians at peace.

     In South Carolina, as already observed,² the proprietors sanctioned enslavement of Indians when carried on for their own financial benefit, and opposed it when carried on by the colonial authorities. The colonial officials favored the practice and carried it on both as a means of meeting colonial expenses and as a source of personal income. In this respect the action of the existing colonial government of South Carolina differs materially from that of the officials of any other colony. Nowhere else was the desire for personal gain a controlling cause for the disposal of captives taken in war and hence colonial property.

     In contrast to these incidental expressions of personal opposition to the enslavement of Indians, stands the ownership and employment of them by leading colonists.³ The

New Englanders not only bought Indians at the time of the Indian wars, but also sent requests to the colonial officials for them. Captain Stoughton wrote to Governor Winthrop from the scene of the Swamp Fight: “By this pinnace, you shall receive 48 or 50 women and children, unless there stay any here to be helpful, concerning which there is one, I formerly mentioned, that is the fairest and largest amongst them to whom I have given a coate to cloathe her. It is my desire to have her for a servant, if it may stand to your good liking, else not. There is a little squaw that steward Culacut desireth, to whom he hath given a coate. Lieut. Davenport also desireth one, to wit, a small one, that has three strokes upon her stomach. . . . He desireth her, if it will stand with your good liking. Sosomon, the Indian, desireth a young little squaw, which I know not.”¹ The Reverend Hugh Peter also wrote to Governor Winthrop in 1637: “Mr. Endecot and my selfe salute you in the Lord Jesus, etc. Wee haue heard of a diuidence of women and children in the bay and would bee glad of a share viz: a young woman or girle and a boy if you thinke good: I wrote to you for some boyes for Bermudas, which I thinke is considerable.”² In July, 1637, Roger Williams petitioned Governor Winthrop for an Indian as follows: “It having againe pleased the Most High to put into your hands another miserable droue of Adams degenerate seede, & our brethren by nature, I am bold (if

I may not offend in it) to request the keeping & bringing vp of one of the children. I haue fixed mine eye on this litle one with the red about his neck, but I will not be peremptory in my choice, but will rest in your loving pleasure for him or any, &c.”¹ The barrister, Emanuel Downing, writing to John Winthrop in 1645, clearly illustrates the view of his day. He says: “A warr with the Narraganset is verie considerable to this plantation, ffor I doubt whither yt be not synne in vs, having power in our hands, to suffer them to maynteyne the worship of the devill which their paw wages often doe; 2lie, If vpon a just warre the Lord should deliuer them into our hands, wee might easily haue men woemen and children enough to exchange for Moores, which wilbe more gaynefull pilladge for vs then wee conceive, for I doe not see how wee can thrive vntill wee gett into a stock of slaves sufficient to doe all our buisines, for our children’s children will hardly see this great Continent filled with people, see that our servants will still desire freedome to plant for them selues, and not stay but for verie great wages. And I suppose you know verie well how wee shall maynteyne 20 Moores cheaper then one Englishe servant.”²

     In only a few of the English-American colonies were attempts made by legislative enactment to end Indian slavery as a system separate from negro slavery. The reasons for this fact are obvious. In the course of time Indian slavery became absorbed by the institution of negro slavery to such an extent that it attracted no attention. With the various colonial acts at the time of the Tuscarora War, which forbade the further importation of Indians into the northern colonies, the system was maintained only by the natural increase

of the Indian slaves already in existence. So Indian slavery existed as an unimportant system along with and overshadowed by negro slavery until the spirit of opposition to the institution of slavery in general grew sufficiently strong to lead to legislation providing for the abolition of slavery in various colonies.

     The first colony to take such legislative action was Virginia, but in this instance there is a slight possibility that the intent of the act to be discussed was quite different from what later interpretations have considered it to be. In 1691, “by implication rather than by the terms of the act”, Indian slavery was rendered illegal by an act authorizing a free and open trade for all persons, at all times and all places, with all Indians whatsoever.¹ It is barely possible that the “legislature may have viewed the act as a treaty with a nation which, ipso facto, was recognized as of equal status as to freedom, while the treaty in no wise prevented subsequent enslavement of individuals sold by the nation itself to the whites, or of hostile captives, or of Indians not native North Americans as generally understood”.² But it is generally considered that the act was intended, as it was later construed, to acknowledge the free condition of all Indians. If the colonists of the time so construed it, they intentionally disobeyed it and enslavement of Indians continued. In 1705, a similar act was passed with the same enacting clause.³ Cases arising later showed a similar failure to accomplish desired results.

     In 1777, the assembly, when called to pass upon the matter, decided that no Indians brought into Virginia since the passage of the act of 1705, or their descendants, could

be slaves in the commonwealth.¹ At that time knowledge of the existence of the act of 1651 seems to have disappeared.² Even after the decision of the assembly in 1777, the settlement of the matter was so far uncertain as to give rise to certain cases in law in 1792 and 1793, appealed from the County Court to the Court of Appeals to maintain the right to the services of the descendants of Indians enslaved after the passing of the act of 1705. In both these cases the higher court affirmed the decision of the lower courts which granted freedom to the Indians thus held as slaves, and which interpreted the act of 1705 as repealing all former acts permitting the existence of Indian slavery in the colony.³

     In 1806, the Supreme Court of the state decided that Indians had always been considered free persons in fact and in right, and that the presumption was that all Indians introduced into the state at any time, were prima facie presumed to be free, or that, if the date of their introduction did not appear, the prima facie presumption was that they were American Indians, or brought in after the act of 1705, and therefore free.⁴ In 1808, came the judicial recognition of the law of 1691. A Supreme Court decision of that year declared “that no native American Indian brought into Virginia since the year 1691 could under any circumstances lawfully be made a slave. It was also held by the court that if a female ancestor of a person asserting a right to

freedom, whose genealogy could be traced back to such ancestor by females only, be proved to have been an Indian, “it seems incumbent on those who claim such person as a slave to show that such ancestor, or some female from which she descended, was brought into Virginia between the years 1679 and 1691, and under circumstances which, according to the laws then in force, created a right to hold her in slavery.”¹

     In the case of Butt v. Rachel et al., 1814, the plaintiffs claimed their freedom as descendants of a native female Indian who was brought into Virginia about the year 1747. The court instructed the jury that no native American Indian brought into Virginia since the year 1691, could, under any circumstances, be made a slave. The defendant claimed to hold the slaves on the ground that they were the descendants of a native American Indian woman who was held as a slave on the island of Jamaica, and brought to Virginia as a slave about the year 1747. The defendant moved the court to instruct the jury that a native American Indian held as a slave on the island of Jamaica by the laws of that island, might be held as a slave when imported into Virginia. The court refused so to do, and judgment was awarded the plaintiff. The case was appealed, but the court sustained the judgment.²

     Considering the possibility already mentioned that the act of 1691 may have been intended to apply only to Indians outside the colony and that it did not apply to those in the colony, either free or enslaved, and the fact that the later legislative action of 1777 and the cases in law already mentioned show that the law was either misconstrued or

ignored, the acts of 1691 and 1705, so far as putting an end to Indian slavery in Virginia in colonial times is concerned, might as well have never existed.¹

     At a later date, South Carolina also enacted laws which, by court decision, were interpreted to mean the abolition of Indian slavery. The act of 1740² stated that “all negroes, Indians (free Indians in amity with this government, and negroes, mulattoes, or mestizoes who are now free, excepted), mulattoes, or mestizoes, who are now or who shall hereafter be in this province, and all their issue and offspring born, or to be born, shall be, and they are hereby declared to be and remain forever hereafter, absolute slaves, and shall follow the condition of the mother.” Under this provision it has been uniformly held that color was prima facie evidence that the party hearing the color of a negro, mulatto or mestizo, was a slave; but the same prima facie result did not follow from the Indian color, according to the decision of the courts.³ After the passage of the act, Indians and descendants of Indians were regarded as free Indians in amity with the government, until the contrary was shown. Elsewhere in the act of 1740 it is declared that “every negro, Indian, mulatto, and mestizo is a slave unless the contrary can be made to appear”, yet in the same act it is immediately thereafter provided” the Indians in amity with this government excepted, in which case the

burden of the proof shall lie on the defendant”, that is on the person claiming the Indian plaintiff to be a slave. This latter clause of the provision grew to be considered the rule, and so the race of slave Indians, or of Indians not in amity with the government, passed out of existence and the previous part of the provision lost its application.¹

     By an act of May 18, 1652, passed by the Commissioners of Providence Plantations and Warwick, it was provided that “no black mankind, or white, being forced to covenant, bond or otherwise, serve any man or his assigns longer than ten years, or until they come to be twenty-four years of age, if they be taken under fourteen, from the time of their coming within the limits of this colony, and at the end or term of ten years to set them free, as the matter is with the English servants”.² The act makes no mention of Indian slaves, doubtless because at this early date there were not enough in the colony to arouse interest in their condition.

     When at the time of King Philip’s War Indian slaves were being transported by Massachusetts and distributed among the settlements, Rhode Island, March, 1676, passed a law concerning them similar to the law of 1652 relating to negroes. This act provided that “no Indian in this colony be a slave but only to pay their debts, or for their bringing up, or courtesy they have received, or to perform covenant, as if they had been countrymen not in war.”³

     In colonial New York it was customary to discriminate

between the free natives of the colony and those brought from the Spanish West Indies. On December 5, 1679, it was voted at a council meeting that “all Indians here are free and not slaves, except such as have been formerly brought from the Bay of Campeachy and other foreign parts”, some of whom were slaves in the colony. Concerning such foreign Indians the act provided: “But if any shall be brought hereafter within the space of six months, they are to be disposed of as soon as may be, out of the government, but after the expiration of six months, all that shall be brought here from these parts shall be free”.¹ On April 20, 1680, a decree of governor and council repeated this resolution as a formal order.² Apparently no immediate attention was given to the enforcement of the law. Later some action regarding the matter was taken when the council, October 11, 1687, ordered that certain Spanish Indians brought from the Bay of Campeachy and sold as slaves in the colony should be set free.³ On July 30, 1688, the council again took up the question of foreign Indians. It was resolved “that all Indian slaves within this province subject to the King of Spain, that can give an account of their Christian faith and say the Lord’s Prayer, be forthwith set at liberty, and sent home by the first conveyance, and likewise them that shall hereafter come to the province.⁴ On the same day the council rejected a petition of the owner to retain in the colony an Indian slave purchased outside the colony and brought to New York.

     The numerous petitions to the governor to free such Indians from slavery, and his attitude in the matter, show the colonial authorities willing to stand by their legislation on the subject. On December 28, 1700, such a petition was presented by the mayor and aldermen of New York City to the governor, demanding the release of a free born Indian woman, a native of Curaçao, then held as a slave in New York.¹ On July 15, 1703, Jacobus Kierstead, a mariner, of New York, petitioned the governor regarding an Indian brought by him from the West Indies and sold as a slave.² Soon after Governor Hunter’s arrival in the province a petition was handed him on behalf of a number of free-born Spanish subjects thus held as slaves.³ Among the victims was one Stephen Domingo, a native of Carthagena, who had been held as a slave for eight years. Hunter became interested in the matter and wrote to the Board of Trade, June 23, 1712, that there were Spanish Indians in New York who had been unjustly kept there in slavery for many years. He discovered that one Husea and one John, both held as slaves and both engaged in the slave conspiracy of 1712, were brought to New York as prisoners of war taken from a Spanish vessel by a privateer; that they were Spanish-American Indians and subjects of the king of Spain, sold as slaves in New York and kept in bondage six or seven years “by reason of their color which is swarthy”. They declared they were sold among many others of the same color and the same country. These two Indians Governor Hunter reprieved awaiting the queen’s pleasure. The Indians who petitioned, though he “secretly pitied their condition”,

he was unable to help as he had no other evidence than their words.¹

     Rhode Island is the only other colony which took direct action concerning Spanish Indians, but even Rhode Island never put forth any general legislation on the matter. Special action was taken similar to that in New York. In 1746, the general assembly of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations voted to send back to the West Indies certain free subjects of the king of Spain who had been captured and sold in the colony as slaves.² These, like the others mentioned, were captives taken in the recent war with Spain.³ Here, as in New York, the point involved was one of international importance, and the Indians concerned were considered, not as Indians but as the objects about which the point was raised.

     The other colonies of the original thirteen which finally took legislative action to end the institution of slavery in general did not accomplish such action during the colonial period; so the conclusion remains that with the exception of Virginia, South Carolina, Rhode Island and New York, none of the colonies ever declared Indian slavery illegal.