Indian slavery in colonial times within the present limits of the United StatesLauber, Almon Wheeler
History
Indian slavery in colonial times within the present limits of the United States
Lauber, Almon Wheeler
Indians of North America; Indians, Treatment of -- United States; Slavery -- United States; Thesis (Ph. D.)
Of the processes in vogue among the English for the acquisition of
Indian slaves, the most productive was that of warfare.[409] With the
exception of the Pequot War and King Philip’s War in New England, the
Indian wars in the English colonies were confined to the south, and
there the greatest number of Indian war captives were enslaved.
After the Indian massacre of 1622 in Virginia, there was published
in London, in the same year, a tract entitled: “_The Relation of the
Barbarous Massacre in Time of Peace and League, treacherously executed
by the native infidels upon the English, the Twenty-second of March,
1622, published by Authority_.” The general trend of the tract is to
show the good that might result to the plantation from this disaster.
Number five of the possible results reads: “Because the Indians, who
before were used as friends, may now most justly be compelled to
servitude in mines, and the like, of whom some may be sent for the use
of the Summer Islands.”[410]
The policy advocated by the tract was carried out in succeeding
Indian wars in Virginia. The accounts of a certain Thomas Smallcomb,
lieutenant at Fort Royal on Pamunkey, who was probably killed in the
war with Opechancanough, show him possessed at the time of his death,
1646, of several Indian slaves.[411] It seems probable that these
slaves were captives in war. After his rebellion, 1676, Bacon sold some
of his Indian prisoners.[412] The rest were disposed of by Governor
Berkeley.[413]
From the beginning of the colony, the settlers of Carolina were in
trouble with the Indians. In September, 1671, war was declared against
the Kussoe, a tribe on the southern frontier who posed as allies of the
Spaniards, and who vexed the Carolina settlers with petty depredations.
The Kussoe were quickly defeated, and the prisoners sent to be sold out
of the colony, unless ransomed by their countrymen.[414] During the war
with the Stono Indians in 1680, the captive Indians were brought to
Charleston and sold by Governor West to the traders in the colony to be
carried to the West Indies as slaves.[415]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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