IT sometimes happened that the Indians sold to the whites, for a specified number of years, members of their own tribe as a punishment for some grievous offense.¹ Families sold some of their own members into temporary servitude to obtain money or other necessities,² or an individual Indian offered himself or his children as security for loans, and, on failure to meet the obligations, became the slaves, of the creditors.³ Occasionally an outcast or disgraced Indian, having lost his position in the family or the tribe, sold himself into slavery to the whites in order to escape punishment at the hands of his own people and to secure future protection for himself.

     The treachery of the whites in refusing to give up the Indians at the expiration of the specified term of service, and the selling of them out of the country, caused considerable disturbance among the Indians in several colonies.

In 1660, a company of English from Massachusetts settled on Old Town Creek at its junction with Cape Fear River in the present North Carolina. The settlement was short lived, lasting something less than three years. One reason why the settlers left was the hostile attitude of neighboring Indians who believed that the white men had shipped off as slaves some of the Indian children who had been entrusted to their care, under the pretext of sending them north to be educated.¹ Though the charge has never been substantiated, it seems probable that it was not without cause. The lax state of morals among the early settlers would permit the kidnapping of Indians to be practiced by this little settlement as well as elsewhere. But whether the settlers were guilty or not on this particular occasion, the incident throws a certain light on the custom of the times through the fear which the Indians showed of such treatment.² Evidently the practice continued in North Carolina, for one of the grievances of the Tuscarora Indians at the breaking out of the Tuscarora War was that their children who had been bound out for a limited time in English families, were, contrary to the spirit of the agreement, transported to other plantations and sold as slaves.³

     Virginia was always comparatively lenient in her treatment of the Indians. Accordingly, its early legislation dealt with the matter of unjustly forcing Indians into slavery. In 1655, provision was made that Indian children could become indentured servants only by consent of their parents and for specified terms agreed upon, and such children were

to be educated in the Christian religion.¹ The following year, 1656, it was provided that Indian children brought into the colony as hostages should be assigned to masters by choice of their parents, but should not be made slaves.² Again, in 1658, it was decreed that any Indian children disposed of by their parents to a white man for “education and instruction in the Christian religion”, or for any other purpose, were not to be turned over to any other person upon any pretext whatever, and any such child was to be free at the age of twenty-five.³ The fact that the legislation on the subject was repeated at such short intervals affords evidence of the continuance of the custom which it was intended to abolish. A letter of Governor Spotswood to Lord Dartmouth, March 11, 1711, regarding the Indian college, tells of his attempt to persuade Indians to allow their children to attend the college by remitting their annual tribute of skins, and declares that “they were a little shy of yielding to his proposal, and urged the breach of a former contract made long ago by this government, when instead of their children receiving the promised education, they were transported, as they say, to other countries and sold as slaves”.⁴

     Massachusetts sought to control the custom of the Indians in apprenticing themselves and their children to the whites and the consequent abuse of the practice, by enacting, in 1700, a law requiring the consent of two or more justices of the peace to such a proceeding, so as to make sure that the terms of the agreement were reasonable. The justices of the regular courts were empowered to hear the complaint

of an Indian with regard to any indenture or apprenticeship, and to settle the matter.¹ Similar acts were passed in 1718² and 1725.³ The latter act provided a heavy fine for taking any children beyond the seas without due legal sanction, and further decreed that any indenture then existing of an adult Indian should be good for no longer than one year from the date of the passage of the law, except by legal approval as specified in the law. In 1763, another act, to continue as law for three years, was passed, forbidding any Marshpee Indian to bind out his or her child or children to any English person whatsoever by indenture or any other way, in satisfaction of or as security for a debt, without the consent of the major part of the overseers, and declaring that every indenture or any instrument whatever, or oral agreement whereby such child or children should be bound out contrary to the true intent and meaning of the act, should be adjudged null and void.⁴

     Rhode Island, also, for the same purpose of preventing the conversion of apprenticeship into actual slavery, passed an act, June 15, 1730, requiring the assent of two justices to any bond of apprenticeship to which the Indians were parties.⁵ If the Indian captives disposed of for periods of

years by Rhode Island at the close of King Philip’s War are to be considered as involuntary indentured servants, then such abuses as the law of 1730 were intended to remedy existed with reference to those captives. By the terms of their disposal they were to be free after a temporary period of service. But the colonists sometimes continued to hold them in servitude after the specified term had expired. Furthermore, though no provision for such action was made by the colonial government, the masters of these servants held as slaves the children born of these Indians while in servitude.¹

     Conditions in New York in the eighteenth century serve to illustrate the same point. In July, 1715, Colonel Heathcote wrote home to Secretary Townsend: “The Indians complain that their children, who were many of them bound out for a limited time to be taught and instructed by the Christians, were, contrary to the intent of their agreement, transferred to other plantations and sold for slaves, and I don’t know but there may be some truth in what they allege”.² The authorities were aware of the danger caused by the colonists’ action, and in 1750 Governor Clinton ordered all Indian children held as pledges or slaves, to be returned to their families.³ Johnson, the Indian commissioner, was much pleased with the governor’s action and January 22, 1750, wrote him: “I am very glad that your excellency has given orders to have the Indian children returned, who are kept by the traders as pawns or pledges as they call it, but rather stolen from them (as the parents came at the appointed time to redeem them, but they sent them away before hand), and as they were children of our

Friends and Allies, and if they are not returned next Spring, it will confirm what the French told the Six Nations (viz.): that we looked upon them as slaves or negroes, which affair gave me a great deal of trouble at that time to reconcile”. Evidently the holders were disinclined to obey the governor’s order, for Johnson cited in his letter two cases where such return had not been made, and from which he feared disturbance.¹ To what extent the governor’s decree was effective would be hard to state. There certainly were Indian slaves in the colony after its publication. “A list of the Negro, Indian and Mulatto Slaves within the district whereof Benjamin Smith is Captain at Hempstead in Queens County taken the first day of April, 1755,” shows that Indian slaves were being used on Long Island at that date,² and it seems not unlikely that some of them might have been obtained by abuse of indenture.

     Another process of enslaving Indians was that which had to do with the infliction of punishment for offenses against law and order. The custom of sentencing Indians to enslavement at home, or to transportation and enslavement abroad, for such offenses was general throughout the colonies. Such a sentence came about in one of two ways: either the colonial legislature enacted a law which imposed enslavement as the punishment for a given offense; or a colonial court acting on its own initiative used it to that end.

     In South Carolina, even after the wholesale deportation of captive and kidnapped Indians for slaves had practically ceased, natives were sometimes sentenced to slavery by the assembly as punishment for crime of which the accused was convicted or suspected. Such an instance occurred, May 29, 1725, when it was “Ordered that Colonel Alexander

Parris, Public Receiver, do forthwith sell the Indian now in jail for the supposed murder of a white man to the northward of the province, in order that he may be transferred to Bermuda, Jamaica or Barbadoes, or some other of the West India Islands.”¹ Again on May 31, 1732, “His Excellency having asked the advice of the Council in relation to an Indian delivered up by her own nation, now in jail of this town, on suspicion of having murdered an Indian trader; it is resolved, that as it could not be fully proved that she was the person that murdered the said Indian trader, but strong presumptions appearing ordered that Colonel Parris cause her to be transported and sold, for the use of the Publick.”² A similar instance occurred in Massachusetts in 1666 when the general court sentenced a Pequot to slavery for life as punishment for the murder of a white colonist by the Indians.³

     In Virginia, as a measure of protection to property rights upon a complaint of damages committed by Indians, the assembly voted in 1660 that the plaintiff in the case be given the right, provided satisfaction were not made, to sell as many Indians out of the country as the court might prescribe.⁴ Another act of similar character was passed in 1722 after the treaty of Albany, when the assembly voted that no Virginia Indian should cross the Potomac River, and that none of the Five Nations or their allies should go beyond that boundary. Any offenders were to be punished

by death, or be transported and sold as slaves.¹ In Massachusetts, also, the question of runaway slaves who sought refuge among the Indians, led the general court, June 2, 1641, to pass an order by which it was declared to be the mind of the court “that if the Indians send not back our runaways, then, by commission of the governor and any three of the magistrates, to send and take so many as to satisfy for the want of them and for the charge of sending for them”.² The order, like that of the Virginia legislature, meant that any master might be authorized to right himself upon the Indians for wrong done him by them.

     Not only the higher courts, but the lower courts as well, were accustomed to make use of this form of punishment. In 1678, the court of Sandwich, Plymouth, directed that three Indians convicted of breaking open a house and stealing therefrom, should be perpetual slaves, and empowered the owner of the house and stolen property to “make sale of them in New England or elsewhere, as his lawful slaves, for the term of their lives.”³

     Their love of strong drink not infrequently led the Indians into temporary servitude, and served as a means by which the colonists, if so minded, could force them into that condition. On one occasion Boston was building a fort on an island in the harbor. Wages were high and economy was desirable. The general court, therefore, ordered that for drunkenness the Indians should not be whipped, but sent to this island to work for ten days. The

Indians protested and preferred whipping as punishment, but their complaint received no attention.¹

     On March 8, 1683, the Plymouth general court decreed that a certain Indian should serve as a slave for a specified time because of a judgment against him.² At a council held in Boston, also, June 14, 1686, upon notification of the keeper of the prison that a sentence of transportation of an Indian had not been carried into effect, the treasurer was ordered to sell the Indian for a period not exceeding seven years in satisfaction of the judgment against him.³ The Massachusetts council records of January 18, 1695, tell of an Indian accused of “corresponding with and adhering to the Indian enemy” who was transported and sold for the offense.⁴ A similar instance occurred in 1696, when an Indian was condemned “to be transported beyond the seas as a dangerous person and sold”.⁵ On December 1, 1705, the Massachusetts deputies sent in a bill providing that fornication or marriage of white men with negroes or Indians should be punished by selling the colored offenders out of the colony as slaves. Through the intercession of Samuel Sewall, the Indians were dropped from the bill which was then passed as applying to blacks and

mulattoes.¹ The records mention other instances in 1713² and 1776³ when Indians were sold as punishment for crime, the latter case being one of theft. An incident occurred in 1721 when the sentence of an Indian imprisoned in Boston was changed from imprisonment to a term of servitude.⁴ Another Indian, in 1727, was sold for a term of years to a resident of the colony to serve a sentence for debt.⁵ In 1739, on petition of the sheriff of Barnstaple county, the Massachusetts general court impowered the justices of that county to sell an Indian prisoner convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to imprisonment “to any of his majesty’s good subjects for a term not exceeding ten years, for the most he will fetch”, in order to get money to pay the cost of prosecuting the prisoner and the charges of his imprisonment.⁶

     The Indians of Rhode Island gave much trouble by stealing the goods and cattle of the colonists. To prevent it, a law was passed, 1659, to the effect that, if the damage exceeded twenty shillings, the convict might be sold as a slave to any English plantation abroad unless he made restitution.⁷ Instances are not lacking in which the law of 1659 was put into effect. On one occasion (between 1671

and 1685) an Indian convicted of breaking into a house and of beating and wounding a servant, was sentenced to pay a fine, or, if payment were not made in three months, to be sold as a slave in Barbadoes.¹ In 1676, the general court provided that all Indians who should come upon any island in the bay, must have written permission so to do from the committee appointed to dispose of Indians, without which they would be liable to be sold into servitude.²

     The first code of Connecticut laws, 1650, followed the Massachusetts Body of Liberties in authorizing enslavement as a mode of punishment.³ In 1650, certain Indians who failed to make satisfaction for injuries were ordered to be seized and delivered to the injured party, “either to serve or to be shipped out . . . as the case will justly bear”.⁴ In 1660, the general court was empowered by the United Colonies to send a company of men to obtain satisfaction from the Narraganset for certain depredations upon the settlers. Four of the guilty Indians were to be demanded and sent to Barbadoes to be sold as slaves.⁵

     Not only did the New England colonies take separately such legislative action regarding the enslavement of Indians, but Plymouth, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Haven acting together as the New England Confederation, took similar action. Alleged trespassing of Indians upon English territory, and the

fear of a Narraganset war, led the United Colonies, in 1646, to pass an order authorizing, upon complaint of trespass by Indians, the seizure of any of them who should “entertain, protect or rescue the offender”. “And because it will be chargeable keeping Indians in prison; and if they should escape, they are like to prove more insolent and dangerous after, that upon such seizure, the delinquent or satisfaction be demanded of the sagamore or plantation of Indians guilty or accessory as before, and if it be denied, that the magistrates of the jurisdiction deliver up the Indians seized to the party or parties indamaged, either to serve or to be shipped out in exchange for negroes as the case will justly bear.” The commissioners agreed that this measure, though just, was severe, and that it might lead to the Indians seizing the English in return; but they could see no better means of preserving the peace of the colony. As a measure of fairness, therefore, they decreed that before any seizure of Indians was made, a copy of the declaration should be published and given to the particular sagamore. Copies were accordingly given to four leading sachems.¹

     A further process of enslavement was connected with questions of birth. By the recognized common law of nations, the civil law, and the Jewish law, the children of a slave mother became at birth the property of the mother’s owner. Nobody though of the children of slaves being free. Yet, to make certainty doubly sure, the colonial laws from time to time considered the matter and declared the common law a part of colonial legislation.² South Carolina, for example, by an act of 1712,³ repeated in 1722,⁴

and 1735,¹ declared that, with the exception of certain individuals freed by the government, “all negroes, mulattoes, mustizoes, or Indians which at any time heretofore have been sold, or now are held or taken to be, or hereafter shall be bought and sold as slaves, are hereby declared slaves; and they and their children, are hereby made and declared slaves to all intents and purposes.” Another act of 1740, though worded differently, decreed a similar condition for the children of negro, mulatto, mustee and Indian slave mothers.² In 1705, Virginia similarly declared all children bond or free according to the condition of their mothers;³ and, in 1723, decreed that children of female mulattoes or Indians obliged by law to serve till the age of thirty or thirty-one should serve the master or mistress of such mulatto or Indian until they should attain the same age as that up to which the mother was obliged by law to serve.⁴

     A Maryland act of 1663 differs from the acts just mentioned by stating that “all children born of any negro or other slave, shall be slaves as their fathers were for the term of their lives.” Another section of this same act provides that “whatsoever freeborn woman shall intermarry with any slave, from and after the last day of the present assembly, shall serve the master of such slave during the life of her husband; and that all the issue of such freeborn woman, so married, shall be slaves as their fathers

were.”¹ Though the law was of brief duration, persons born of the union between slaves and free white women, and the descendants of such persons, were held in slavery down to 1791, when the highest court of the state decided that for want of proof concerning the white woman who originally married a slave, her descendants were not slaves, and could not be legally held as such.² A later Maryland act, June 2, 1692, provided that all children born or thereafter to be born of slaves within the province were to be slaves for the term of their natural lives.³ Nothing is said in the act of children one of whose parents was free. The act was repealed in 1715.⁴ New York, on its own part, in 1706, decreed that any negro, Indian, mulatto or mustee child should follow the condition of the mother and be esteemed a slave “to all intents and purposes whatsoever.”⁵ Frequent incidental mention, also, is found in the documents of the time and in newspaper advertisements to slaves “born in the house”.⁶

     Certain judicial decisions rendered in the trial of cases in federal and state courts, finally, offer clear indication as to the legality of holding in slavery the children of Indian slave mothers.¹ Of these decisions the one rendered by the Virginia court of appeals in 1831 is particularly instructive. In part it runs as follows: “I cannot for a moment doubt the propriety of the former decisions of this court, and of the instructions under consideration, that proof that a party is descended in the female line from an Indian woman, and especially a native American, without anything more is prima facie proof of his right of freedom liable to be repelled by proof that his race as been immemorially held in slavery; which may be in turn rebutted by the consideration of the ignorance and helpless condition of persons in that situation, aided by other circumstances, such as that many such were bound by law to a service equivalent, in all respects, to a state of temporary slavery, until they attained the age of thirty-one years; and in many cases (according to circumstances existing in almost every case) for an uncertain term beyond that age.”²