Silent Slavery
Slavery as practiced by the Native Americans
American slavery began long before the first Africans arrived at Jamestown in 1619. This is not a very well known aspect of American history, but for at least hundreds (and likely thousands) of years prior, Native Americans were indulging in their own systems of human bondage across the continent. This is not a contested notion either. Historians and scholars widely agree, based on both documentary and archaeological evidence, that slavery was practiced in almost all Native American societies to varying degrees well before Europeans ever stepped foot on the continent.
It must be acknowledged: Yes, “Native American” is an overly simplified umbrella term, and yes, the history and cultures of the constituent peoples within this umbrella term can be as insular between one another as any two given civilizations on the planet. Nevertheless, any given history or people group can be deconstructed in this manner, and the fate of recent history and ontology sees to it that there can indeed be practical use in understanding Native Americans as a whole.
Fascinatingly enough, likely the most prevalent and robust slavery across all of North American Natives was that of the Pacific Northwest Coast natives, such as the Tlingit, Haida, Yurok, Klamath, Pawnee, and Kwakwaka’wakw tribes and peoples. From Russian fur trappers to English sailors, the earliest Western explorers noted the presence of slaves in nearly every population they encountered, and every indigenous language in the region includes a word for enslaved persons. Slavery was ubiquitous in these parts, and likely developed as far back as 1,500 BC.
How did this come to be? Why this seemingly random stretch of land? Compared with much of North America, the Northwest Coast was a place of incredible abundance. The cool, wet forests, intertidal zone, and rich marine ecosystems, and above all, the reliability of massive salmon runs, provided the groups that inhabited the Northwest Coast with a wealth of nutritious caloric sources. This allowed coastal groups to establish densely populated permanent or semi-permanent settlements and towns, typified by elaborately-carved longhouses built from coastal timbers. However, this did not coalesce into one unified, egalitarian society. Instead, this was an area with tribal diversity, highly stratified social systems, and violent intertribal competition.
Early observers of the area noted northwest coast natives as aggressive in their defense of territories and often extremely warlike in their relations with their neighbors. Territorial defense and attack against enemy peoples, often involving village raids, were commonplace. In these violent, chaotic raids, it becomes apparent that the dehumanized people of an enemy tribe can be an immensely valuable resource if captured and made into human property. The constant intertribal warfare of the Pacific Northwest and raids therein proliferated into a harsh and robust and system of slavery among almost all tribes throughout the region, with estimates of slaves being up to 10 and 35% of most Northwest Coast populations, according to Leland Donald in his 1997 book Aboriginal Slavery on the Northwest Coast of North America
Northwest slaves typically had no individual rights, and could be put to work, traded, sold, or killed at the sole discretion of their owners. Unless a slave was freed, the condition of slavery was permanent and hereditary. This, by definition, was cold, hard, chattel slavery. As such, Pacific Northwest slaves were primarily used for menial labor and domestic service. But slaves were also used as trade assets, soldiers, dowry, and even for human sacrifices and cannibalism. The utility of slaves gave birth to robust slave trade networks that stretched as far as northern California to the Aleutian Islands. In his 1928 work Economic Aspects of Indigenous American Slavery, anthropologist William Christie Macleod reaches a provocative conclusion that:
“The data available on prices in connection with the data on the percentage of slaves to the total population, distinctly suggest that slavery on the northwest coast among the natives was of nearly as much economic importance to them as was slavery to the plantation regions of the United States before the Civil War. Incredible as this may seem, it seems very definitely indicated by all the facts.”
Within this cruel economy, the Tlingit and Haida peoples of present day Southwest Alaskan coast became the top dogs. Called by some the “Vikings of the Northwest”, the Tlingits and Haidas were especially warring, regionally powerful, and slaves became their cash crop.
You can get an idea of what a raid might’ve been like in anthropologist R.L. Olson’s “Social Life and Social Structure of the Tlingit,” in which a mid-1900’s Tlingit elder describes his memory of a slave raid:
The Tikana once came to the Chilkat country in 28 canoes to raid for slaves. They first came to the fishing camp called Tennane’h in Chilkat Inlet across the peninsula from Haines. All the men of that place except one named Ka’kink were away trapping marmot. A dog barked and gave the alarm. Kakink awoke and saw the raiders back of the houses. But he was able to escape to the beach, where he hid under a canoe. The women jumped into boxes and storage places. But the raiders captured 18 women, including the wife of the chief Tluctci’nk. They also carried away many dressed moose skins which had been traded from the Gunana.
Not only did slavery become the cash cow for the Tlingit and Haida, but it even became central to their culture. Slavery is a recurring and ordinary feature of Northwest Coast mythology, transcribed oral history, artwork, and celebration. For instance, slaves were a prominent commodity within the famous “Potlatch” that many young students in the PNW cutely learn about in their elementary or middle schooling. Potlatches were large celebrations which, among many rituals, involved gifting or destroying valuable items in order to demonstrate a leader's wealth and power. This would include displays like burning food or casting jewelry into a river. Since slaves were another prized yet common commodity, these potlatches also featured human sacrifice in the form of public slave killings. Another account within R.L. Olson’s book describes one such event: “[Chief] Shakes was having his children’s ears pierced and it was quite common that slaves be killed during the ceremonies. This ‘chief’ of the slaves boasted that his master could do nothing to him. But Shakes heard of this and had him beheaded in the course of the festival.”
The practice of slavery went far beyond just the Pacific Northwest — it permeated all regions and peoples. Despite a significantly obscured history of Native Americans due to absence of written language and record keeping, there’s still an abundance of evidence for such practices. Throughout the 1600 and 1700s, Jesuit Catholics attempted mission work among various native tribes around the Great Lakes region, particularly among the Iroquois and Huron peoples. Reports of these ventures are cataloged in The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents, in which the missionaries give numerous accounts of the brutality and slavery they witnessed: “They burn some, they eat others, and the rest they keep as slaves.” (Jesuit Relations 1640, on Iroquois treatment of war captives)
The Iroquois were also known for “Mourning-wars,” which were characterized by the organized abduction and public torture of enemy people as a means of catharsis for bereaving families within the tribe. Historian Daniel K. Richter describes the ritual in his book War and Culture: The Iroquois Experience:
“The rituals began with the return of the war party, which had sent word ahead of the number of captives seized. Most of the villagers, holding clubs, sticks, and other weapons, stood in two rows outside the village entrance to meet the prisoners. Men—but usually not women or young children—received heavy blows designed to inflict pain without serious injury. Then they were stripped and led to a raised platform in an open space inside the village, where old women led the community in further physical abuse, tearing out fingernails and poking sensitive body parts with sticks and firebrands. After several hours, prisoners were allowed to rest and eat, and later they were made to dance for their captors while their fate was decided. Headmen apportioned them to grieving families, whose matrons then chose either to adopt or to execute them. If those who were adopted made a sincere effort to please their new relatives and to assimilate into village society, they could expect a long life; if they displeased, they were quietly and unceremoniously killed.”
Comanches created a vast enterprise of slave selling in the southwest, and would put their non-Comanche captives through a rigorous, dehumanizing, and brutal initiation into enslavement — renaming, tattooing, beating, whipping, mutilation, and starvation. Rachel Plummer's captivity narrative, a firsthand account of a 17 year old Texan girl’s twenty-one months in Comanche captivity provides a glimpse into the Comanche way of life at the time, and evidence of their slavery practices:
“One cold morning, five or six large Indians came where I was suckling my infant. As soon as they came in I felt my heart sick; my fears agitated my whole frame to a complete state of convulsion; my body shook with fear in- deed. Nor were my fears vain or ill-grounded. One of them caught hold of the child by the throat; and with his whole strength, and like an enraged lion actuated by its devouring nature, held on like the hungry vulture, until my child was to all appearance entirely dead…
…They tied a platted rope round the child's neck, and drew its naked body into the large hedges of prickly pears, which were from eight to twelve feet high. They would then pull it down through the pears. This they repeated several times. One of them then got on a horse, and tying the rope to his saddle, rode round a circuit of a few hundred yards,until my little innocent one was not only dead, but literally torn to pieces. I stood horror struck. One of them then took it up by the leg, brought it to me, and threw it into my lap. But in praise to the Indians, I must say, that they gave me time to dig a hole in the earth and bury it. After having performed this last service to the lifeless remains of my dear babe, I sat down and gazed with joy on the resting place of my now happy infant; and I could, with old David, say, "You cannot come to me, but I must go to you;" and then, and even now, whilst I record the awful tragedy, I rejoice that it has passed from the sufferings and sorrows of this world.” (The Rachel Plummer Narrative, 98)
Ute slavery is documented and put on display within the legal trial of United States V. Don Pedro León Luján (1851–1852). The trial records show that the Ute preyed on, captured, and sold Paiute and Navajo children as slaves to other Natives, as well as Spanish, Mexican, and American traders. The records include testimony and documentation of these transactions, showing a well-established slave trade of natives among native groups in the ara. This trial formed the most immediate context for two laws passed during the 1852 legislative session: “An Act for the Relief of Indian Slaves and Prisoners” and "An Act in Relation to Service."
The Narrative of the Coronado Expedition is a primary historical source detailing the 1540-1542 expedition led by Francisco Vázquez de Coronado through the American Southwest, which they detailed many accounts of slavery among the natives they encountered:
“The people here [the Puebloans] are at war with the Apaches and bring back many captives, whom they use as servants and sometimes sacrifice.” (p. 130)
“They [the Puebloans] have slaves who are Indians from other provinces, taken in war, whom they keep for service.” trans. George Parker Winship (1896), (p. 128)
“The people of this province [Tiguex] have a custom of sacrificing some of their prisoners, whom they kill in their religious ceremonies.” (p. 129)
Europeans settlers even bought slaves from natives such as the Creek people. According to Historian Christina Snyder “Creek men and women captured and sold thousands of Indian slaves to English colonists in South Carolina, who then exported many to the Caribbean.” (Slavery in Indian Country, p. 102)
In fact, Native American tribes also engaged in African American slavery - most commonly among the "Five Civilized Tribes" (Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole) of the Southeastern USA. Largely owing to their proximity to where the practice was most common within the country, these people had more or less fully adopted chattel slavery of African Americans in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. By the 1830s, over 3,000 enslaved African Americans lived among the Five Tribes and later in Indian Territory (modern-day Oklahoma). By 1861, around 8,000 enslaved Black people comprised 14% of the Indian Territory population.
Owing to the practice of slavery (in addition to a myriad of other factors) these tribes unilaterally allied with the Confederacy during the American Civil War, even raising troops that fought for the Confederacy. The Confederacy was additionally aided in battle by the Caddo, Osage, Quapaw, Comanche, and more. Native Confederate troops notably fought in the battle of Pea Ridge (March 1862, Arkansas), which was in part led by Confederate Brigadier General Stand Watie, the only Native American to reach the rank of general in the Civil War on either side of the conflict. The Native troops were often noted for their valor on the battlefield, but faced backlash for various war atrocities, such as scalping Union soldiers. In fact, after reports of scalping made their way up north, the practice would go on to be quite a scandal in the Northern press, leading to a spiral of sensationalist news on the matter, to the point where a month after the battle, one editorial in a March 1862 edition of the New York Herald excoriated the commander at the battle of Pea Ridge for “inducing savages to [perform] shocking barbarities…[ordering] scalping and robbing…their favorite pastimes…[for] they plundered every wounded, dying and dead Unionist they could find…[murdering those] incapable of resistance.” The writer then emphasized, “the [Confederate] rebels did everything…to excite them into a frenzy giving them large quantities of whiskey and gunpowder a few minutes previous to the commencement of hostilities.”
Additionally, the Chickasaw and Choctaw were among the last to emancipate enslaved people in 1866. The Tlingit Tribe harshly protested Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, and claimed that U.S. laws—including those abolishing slavery—did not apply to them as they considered themselves a separate and sovereign nation.
Americans have limited encounters with “Native America.” The few encounters come through media and the education system, which are typically superficial - often curated by the politically motivated to portray Natives only in the best light possible. Think Pocahontas, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, the myth of mass Native graves, or any Native American Heritage Month event. This may seem all fine and good, and each unique people should be celebrated! But as a consequence, within the average American’s understanding of U.S. history, Native Americans tend to be conceptualized fairly one dimensionally: they were anciently pure, peaceful, egalitarian, and earthy – perhaps uniquely morally infallible.
In reality, no people are morally infallible, and the default view of American history becomes at least tainted by the logic that flows from this ignorant, half-baked starting point. If Natives were simply pure and good, then they automatically occupy the moral high ground over their more morally compromised European counterparts. Conversely, the European settlers, largely responsible for Native decline, are assumed to be morally deficient by comparison. The result is a reductive narrative of good Natives vs. bad European Americans. You may find this anywhere from inconsequential to correct, but I believe the implications of an over-simplified “Natives good, settlers bad” are much more politically odious than people realize. It truly entails an inevitable disdain for western civilization, hatred of our ancestors, permanently unharmonious race relations, reparations, land acknowledgements, and more. None of this ultimately benefits any race in the United States. As such, it is imperative to call out and oppose this narrative, and any falsehoods that contribute to it.
One could find any number of customs from a variety of Native tribes to subvert notions of Native moral supremacy compared to modern American standards. Slavery is just one example, and can be particularly potent given the outsized weight it too has in America’s moral conscience. And as such, I encourage people to evangelize this knowledge of Native American slavery when relevant and sensible to do so. The goal with this is to liberate us from a “Natives good, settlers bad” narrative. The next step isn’t to swing to the opposite extreme of ‘Natives were the real bad guys, actually’, but it’s to find the middle between and away from these two opposites. This may seem overly aspirational, but this indeed brings us towards the ideal state: the same nuanced, amoral, and correct understanding of Native Americans vs. European American history that we may have when analyzing the Romans vs. Gauls, Mycenaeans vs. Minoans, or Bantus vs. Khoisan. From here, not only can we work toward less toxic, and risky race relations, but we may unchain the identities of all involved peoples from suffocating views of their own history, be it victim or conqueror.
A properly grounded and nuanced view of history will unshackle our view of the players of the past as simply avatars of the political debates of the present, and instead appreciate them in their full complexity as living, breathing human beings with their own goals and faults.
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