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The Other Slavery

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California may have entered the Union as a “free-soil” state, but American settlers soon discovered that the buying and selling of Indians was a common practice there. As early as 1846, the first American commander of San Francisco acknowledged that “certain persons have been and still are imprisoning and holding to service Indians against their will” — location: 149 ^ref-56400

Brigham Young and his followers, after establishing themselves in the area, became the most obvious outlet for these captives. Hesitant at first, the Mormons required some encouragement from slavers, who tortured children with knives or hot irons to call attention to their trade and elicit sympathy from potential buyers or threatened to kill any child who went unpurchased. — location: 169 ^ref-54442

Brigham Young’s son-in-law Charles Decker witnessed the execution of an Indian girl before he agreed to exchange his gun for another captive. — location: 172 ^ref-2754

Indian slavery never went away, but rather coexisted with African slavery from the sixteenth all the way through the late nineteenth century. — location: 198 ^ref-45095

Because Indian slaves did not have to cross an ocean, no ship manifests or port records exist, but only vague references to slaving raids. — location: 207 ^ref-21194

If we were to add up all the Indian slaves taken in the New World from the time of Columbus to the end of the nineteenth century, the figure would run somewhere between 2.5 and 5 million slaves (appendix 1). — location: 212 ^ref-21712

in stark contrast to the African slave trade, which consisted primarily of adult males, the majority of Indian slaves were actually women and children. — location: 226 ^ref-22046

Indian slave prices from such diverse regions as southern Chile, New Mexico, and the Caribbean reveal a premium paid for women and children over adult males. — location: 227 ^ref-35772

Indian slaves could eventually become part of the dominant society. Unlike those caught up in African slavery, which was a legally defined institution passed down from one generation to the next, Indian slaves could become menials, or servants, and with some luck attain some independence and a higher status even in the course of one life span — location: 236 ^ref-52263

Apaches, who had early on been among the greatest victims of enslavement, transformed themselves into successful slavers. In colonial times, Apaches had been hunted down and marched in chains to the silver mines of Chihuahua. But as Spanish authority crumbled in the 1810s and the mining economy fell apart during the Mexican era, the Apaches turned the tables on their erstwhile masters. They raided Mexican communities, took captives, and sold them in the United States. — location: 246 ^ref-60523

In the early nineteenth century, Mexico proscribed all forms of bondage and extended citizenship to the Indians. Yet Indian slavery persisted. One of the most revealing aspects of this other slavery is that since it had no legal basis, it was never formally abolished like African slavery. — location: 253 ^ref-27903

Congress thus intervened to nullify New Mexico’s servitude laws. Yet as the nation plunged into war, the matter of Indian servitude took a backseat to the burning question of black slavery. — location: 4682 ^ref-33338

Indians held in bondage reached record numbers in New Mexico during the Navajo campaign of 1863–1864. — location: 4687 ^ref-50754

Indians had to demonstrate that they were legally employed or face charges of “vagrancy,” which would result in compulsory work awarded to the highest bidder for a period of four months. Natives convicted of crimes were regularly leased to whites who paid their bail. — location: 4834 ^ref-45926

thousands of Indian children were awarded to white families as “apprentices.” According to the Act for the Government and Protection of Indians of 1850, any white person could go before a justice of the peace and secure the “custody, control, and earnings” of an Indian minor as long as the “parents or friends” gave their consent. — location: 4836 ^ref-15693

This resulted in more kidnapping parties roaming the Golden State to obtain suitable children and murder their parents, as well as the intensification of the Indian wars in the early 1860s. — location: 4840 ^ref-3948

Woodman, who was caught transporting sixteen Yuki and Pomo children as he crossed into Napa County. Woodman’s captives were confiscated, but he was let go with only a slap on the wrist. — location: 4847 ^ref-44019

The Peonage Act of 1867, as it became known, was a further elaboration of the Thirteenth Amendment. — location: 4881 ^ref-24625

  1. Yet the written word was not enough to do away with the nexus of practices and customs that had lasted for centuries. Few peons invoked the protection of this act, and fewer masters still were prosecuted. — location: 4886 ^ref-56254

One month later, Congress issued Joint Resolution No. 65 authorizing Lieutenant General Sherman to use any reasonable means at his disposal to “reclaim from bondage the women and children of the Navajo, as well as other tribes now held in slavery in the Territory adjoining their homes and the reservation on which the Navajo Indians have been confined.” — location: 4912 ^ref-44841

The jurors had peons of their own or had family members and friends who had them. — location: 4929 ^ref-37994

Commissioner Griffin succeeded in liberating 291 Indian slaves and 60 peons. Although this was a major accomplishment, the majority of owners accused of holding Indians illegally faced no consequences. — location: 4935 ^ref-21037

“Designed for the sweeping and basic purpose of sanctifying and nationalizing the right of freedom,” tenBroek asserted, “few indeed, have successfully invoked it.” — location: 4943 ^ref-16713

This was the sum total of the Thirteenth Amendment’s accomplishments up to 1951—a very modest harvest considering the scope of the problem. — location: 4947 ^ref-38076

Gonzales had started working at the Cabezón Ranch in 1933 when he was thirteen years of age to repay $50 that his mother had borrowed for the wedding of an older brother. In less than three months, Gonzales worked off the debt. However, he agreed to continue working for 50 cents a day plus food, clothing, and shelter. In theory the ranch owner would deposit Gonzales’s wages in an account for his old age. But according to the plaintiff’s version, he never saw any bank statements or any other accounting of the wages. — location: 4953 ^ref-28898

in some counties of northern New Mexico, as many as forty to fifty percent of rural workers lived in what he characterized as “a state of semi-peonage.” — location: 4958 ^ref-19220

Historian Gunther Peck has examined the activities of padrones among Italians, Greeks, and Mexicans and has underscored the fact that far from being throwbacks to the slave owners of the past, padrones were a product of the new industrial pressures of American capitalism and made use of new means of transportation to mobilize workers from distant corners of the world to create immediate and disposable workforces. — location: 4969 ^ref-54820

“the old slavery,” based on legal ownership of certain racial groups, and “the new slavery,” in which formal ownership has been replaced by a variety of mechanisms of control, such as indebtedness or threats of violence, directed not at a particular race, but at poor and vulnerable populations regardless — location: 4978 ^ref-11276

the emphasis on the newness of contemporary forms of bondage is myopic. — location: 4985 ^ref-29845

By placing the emphasis on the newness of this phenomenon, we underestimate the staying power and extraordinary adaptability of slavery itself. — location: 4993 ^ref-21797

Modern incarnations of involuntary servitude and human trafficking are hardly by-products of economic dislocations or the growing inequality of the contemporary world. Such nefarious endeavors have existed for centuries as a substitute for formal slavery and have expanded in times of war, revolution, lack of state control, and globalization — location: 4997 ^ref-49494

Only by contemplating this longer trajectory can we gain a measure of the breathtaking dynamism and staying power of the other slavery and related forms of involuntary servitude. — location: 5001 ^ref-54824

there is no one business model for the trafficking of humans. The long experience of Native Americans shows that this variability of practices, supremely adapted to each social and legal context and region, — location: 5009 ^ref-49511

Since those who benefit from forced labor will always find ways to get around the law, it is necessary to deploy a very flexible and dynamic regulatory system that matches the adaptability of involuntary servitude and enforces the law effectively. — location: 5015 ^ref-35180

The Native American experience shows, for instance, that the other slavery was capable of shifting geographically and targeting new groups. Attempts to liberate one group often resulted in the enslaving of a neighboring group. — location: 5016 ^ref-46993