Slavery among the Indians of North America

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Deed of Entitlement to Enslaved Captive Indians signed by Edward Winslow , Leader of the Pilgrims and Governor of the Plymouth Colony

Under the heading of slavery among the Indians of North America , three historical facts must be described: Firstly, traditional Indian slavery , i. H. the enslavement of Indians by Indians; second, the enslavement of Indians by whites; third, the enslavement of African Americans by Indians.

Slavery among the Indians

Slavery was by no means common among the Indians, but it was used on a larger scale among some peoples. The Haida and Tlingit of the southeast coast of Alaska were known as warriors and slaveholders whose raids and campaigns led them as far as California . Prisoners of war were enslaved. The slave status was hereditary. For some tribes of the Pacific Northwest , about a quarter of the population was made up of slaves. In Canada, too , some of the First Nations enslaved prisoners of war . Slaves were kept by the Comanche in Texas , the Creek in Georgia , the Pawnee in Nebraska , the Klamath , Tupinambás, and the northern California fishing people of the Yurok . Many of the indigenous people engaged in slavery hoped through the slave trade with the colonists for better relations with the British settlers in order to prevent their own enslavement.

Whites enslaved Indians

Shortly after America was discovered in 1492 , the colonists enslaved the native Americans. One of the first places of intense enslavement (including the Arawaks ) and slave labor was the gold mines on Hispaniola . European colonists also enslaved Indians in the 17th century. Many of these slaves were taken from the mainland to the island colonies, especially to the "sugar cane islands" in the Caribbean . Historian Alan Galley estimates that British slave traders sold between 24,000 and 51,000 Indians from the south of what is now the United States between 1670 and 1715 .

In colonial California , the trade in Indian slaves was organized by the Franciscan missions , who theoretically were only allowed to let the Indians work for them for ten years, but actually kept them unfree in the long term; they were not released until the mid-1830s. When California became American following the Mexican-American War , the Indians in this region fell again into slavery from 1850 to 1867.

In order to be allowed to keep Indian slaves, whites in the USA had to leave bail. Indian slaves were recruited by raiding and as a (limited) punishment for non-sedentary (engl. Vagrancy ).

Indian enslavement of African Americans

After trying to adapt to the society of European immigrants (see Five Civilized Tribes ), the Cherokee and several other Indian tribes began to buy black slaves in the early 19th century. They continued this practice after they were deported to Indian territory in what is now Oklahoma in the 1830s . The keeping of black slaves among the Cherokee was modeled on the keeping of white slaves. Cherokee-black marriages were prohibited. Cherokee who supported slaves were punished with flagellation . Blacks were not allowed to hold office, bear arms or own property within the Cherokee society. It was also illegal to teach black people to read and write. After the end of the American Civil War , the tribe committed to accepting their freedmen, released in 1863, as full members of the tribe, but the right to vote was never implemented. In the 20th and 21st centuries, this status was challenged several times by representatives of the Cherokee Nation. Since the 1980s, lawsuits have been pending for the freedman's nationality . To this day (as of mid-2010), the processes have not been completed; due to an injunction, pronounced exclusions have already been suspended until the courts have finally decided. In August 2011, the Cherokee Nation Supreme Court , the supreme court of the independent Cherokee Nation in the United States, ruled that the constitutional amendment, which still denies the descendants of ex-slaves the right to vote, was lawful. The right to vote can only be obtained by those who can show at least one Cherokee among their ancestors, which excludes the majority of the descendants of former slaves. In the United States Congress , initiatives have been launched in the 21st century to make further federal support for the Cherokee Nation dependent on the recognition of the freedman as full member of the people.

Other Indian peoples, such as the Seminoles , gave refuge to escaped Afro-American slaves and took them into their tribal association as Black Seminoles .

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Digital "African American Voices" ( Memento from July 15, 2007 in the Internet Archive ); "Haida Warfare" (both offline)
  2. ^ Encyclopedia Britannica: Slave-owning societies
  3. ↑ Gallay, Alan; Forgotten Story of Indian Slavery (2003)
  4. ^ Encyclopedia Britannica: Slavery
  5. ^ Alan Gallay: The Indian Slave Trade: The Rise of the English Empire in the American South 1670-171 . Yale University Press: New York, 2002. ISBN 0-300-10193-7
  6. ^ ED Castillo: Short Overview of California Indian History ( Memento December 14, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) , California Native American Heritage Commission, 1998
  7. ^ Delilah L. Beasley: Slavery in California , The Journal of Negro History, Vol. 3, No. 1. (Jan.), 1918, pp. 33-44.
  8. ^ Howard Zinn: A People's History of the United States, Harper Perennial, 2005, p. 137 ISBN 0-06-083865-5
  9. ↑ a b Ansgar Graw: The Indians also kept black slaves. In: Welt Online . January 23, 2011, accessed January 23, 2011 .
  10. ↑ A description of the history of the descendants of the Cherokee slaves in: Circe Sturm: Blood Politics, Racial Classification, and Cherokee National Identity: The Trials and Tribulations of the Cherokee Freedmen , in: American Indian Quarterly, Vol. 22, No. 1 / 2, (Winter - Spring, 1998), pp. 230-258. In 1835 7.4% of Cherokee families owned slaves. For comparison, in 1860 nearly a third of white families in the Confederate States were keeping slaves. Another evaluation of the Federal Cherokee Census of 1835 in: WG McLoughlin: The Cherokees in Transition: a Statistical Analysis of the Federal Cherokee Census of 1835 , in: Journal of American History, Vol. 64, 3, 1977, p. 678. Mit the total number of slave-owning families deals with: Otto H. Olsen: Historians and the extent of slave ownership in the Southern United States ( Memento of July 20, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) , in: Civil War History, December 2004
  11. ↑ JW Duncan: Interesting ante-bellum laws of the Cherokee, now Oklahoma history , in: Chronicles of Oklahoma, 6 (2), 1928, pp. 178-180; JB Davis 1933. Slavery in the Cherokee nation , in: Chronicles of Oklahoma, 11 (4), 1933, pp. 1056-1072
  12. ^ Charles J. Kappler: Treaty with the Cherokee, 1866. Article 9. In: Indian Affairs: Laws and Treaties. Vol. 2, Treaties. United States Government Printing Office , 1904, Retrieved June 27, 2010 .
  13. ↑ Manfred Podzkiewitz: A black is not an Indian. In: Telepolis. August 27, 2011, accessed August 28, 2011 .
  14. ↑ Cherokee Nation: Summary of Citizenship Issue ( Memento December 15, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) (accessed July 2, 2010)
  15. ↑ Descendants Of Freedmen Of The Five Civilized Tribes: Status from the Freedman's Point of View ( Memento of July 9, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) (accessed July 2, 2010)

literature

All book titles given are in English:

  • Russell M. Magnaghi: Indian Slavery, Labor, Evangelization, and Captivity in the Americas , The Scarecrow Press, 1998, ISBN 0-8108-3355-7
  • Patrick Minges: Slavery in the Cherokee Nation: The Keetoowah Society and the Defining of a People 1855-1867 , Routledge, 2003, ISBN 0-415-94586-0
  • Barbara J. Olexer: The Enslavement of the American Indian in Colonial Times , Joyous Publishing, 2005, ISBN 0-9722740-4-9