in the house”.[733] 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.[734] 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 to freedom liable to be repelled by proof that his race has 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.”[735] CHAPTER IX +Property Relations+ Though the practices connected with the institution of negro and Indian slavery in the Spanish colonies were known to the English colonists, yet at first the latter did not see fit to impose the status of slavery upon the Indians brought into the colonies by way of trade with the Spanish islands or otherwise, but were content to retain possession of the services of their subject Indians without taking possession of their persons through legal declarations imposing the status of slavery upon them.[736] Such Indians were held in the status of servitude, a condition which stood “midway between freedom and absolute subjection”, and which was the “historic base upon which slavery, by the extension and addition of incidents, was constructed.”[737] The right of ownership of the services of both negroes and Indians was, after all, what the colonists most desired, and appeared to promise satisfaction in this instance as it had in the case of the white indentured servants. Indian servitude not only preceded Indian slavery, but even continued after the institution of slavery was fully developed. This is true of most, if not all, of the English-American colonies. It is certainly true of Maryland, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina. Statutory recognition of slavery in general by the English-American colonies occurred as follows: by Massachusetts in 1641; by Connecticut in 1650; by Virginia in 1661; by Maryland in 1663; by New York and New Jersey in 1664; by South Carolina in 1682; by Pennsylvania and Rhode Island in 1700; by North Carolina in 1715; and by Georgia in 1755.[738] But the legislation of these dates did not always include the subject