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

Starting with King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, several Spanish monarchs tried to stamp out Indigenous slavery. This was an enormous task considering Spain was “an empire of slaves” (131). The Spanish Empire included five major slaving grounds in the seventeenth century: Chile; the provinces of Paraguay, Tucumán (modern-day Argentina), and adjacent areas in the Andes; the llanos, or grasslands, of Colombia and Venezuela; northern Mexico; and the Philippines. Spanish colonists forced migrations of Indigenous peoples spanning hundreds or even thousands of miles. While these places included “Indian-on-Indian bondage harking back to pre-contact times” (135), the long-distance slaving networks were unthinkable before the arrival of white colonists.

While Spanish monarchs, such as Queen Mariana, began freeing slaves from these slaving grounds in the mid-17th century (which was part of the Spanish campaign), their most detailed pronouncement “appears in the monumental compilation of laws of the Spanish colonies known as the Recopilación de las leyes de Indias” (136). While this was a noble endeavor, the monarchs’ direct orders did not carry much weight. For example, slavers engaged in the trafficking of Indigenous peoples from New Mexico to the silver mines of northern Mexico continued to use royal carriages to transport their captives.