The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America

“Indian slavery never went away, but rather coexisted with African slavery from the sixteenth all the way through the late nineteenth century.”

In the opening chapter of The Other Slavery, Reséndez dispels the myth that Indigenous slavery was marginal, especially compared with African slavery. Detailed records exist documenting African slavery because it was legal. While there are records that document Indigenous slavery, they are more piecemeal because this enslavement practice was illegal. For this reason, Indigenous slavery has largely been erased from North America’s historical record. This book documents several areas that experienced intense Indigenous slavery to bring to light the breadth and scope of the enslavement of Indigenous peoples.

“He [Columbus] wrote that he ‘would have sent many Indians to Castile, and they would have been sold, and they would have become instructed in our Holy Faith and our customs, and then they would have returned to their lands to teach the others.’ Yet, according to the Admiral, they stayed in the Caribbean because ‘the Indians of Española were and are the greatest wealth of the island, because they are the ones who dig, and harvest, and collect the bread and other supplies, and gather the gold from the mines, and do all the work of men and beasts alike.’”

This passage describes Columbus’s two economic plans to ensure that his voyages were profitable. After realizing that he had landed in the Americas, rather than Asia, Columbus desperately needed to figure out a way to create profits. Following the model of other European colonizers in Africa, he began to export Indigenous peoples as slaves to Spain. He believed that the payoff would be enormous. However, the Spanish monarchs at the time, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, were against the enslavement of the Indigenous peoples. As a result, Columbus changed his plan to force the Indigenous peoples to work in the mines and other endeavors on the island. Columbus’s desire for profit and fame led to the initial enslavement of the Indigenous peoples of the North American continent, a practice that would continue for centuries.