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.[1244] 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”.[1245] 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.[1246] 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.[1247] At that time knowledge of the existence of the act of 1691 seems to have disappeared.[1248] 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.[1249]