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

The earliest European colonizers, most notably Christopher Columbus, began the process of enslaving Indigenous peoples. Columbus sent four ships loaded to capacity with over 500 Indigenous peoples to Europe to be auctioned off in markets throughout the Mediterranean. Left to his own devises, Columbus would have turned the Caribbean into a major slave trade hub. Yet, the Spanish monarchs, Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand, grew increasingly reluctant to enslave Indigenous peoples. Throughout the 16th and 17th centuries several Spanish monarchs prohibited Indigenous slavery except in special cases. Spanish settlers and their descendants used these special cases as loopholes to continue Indigenous slavery. However, because these Indigenous captives were not legally slaves, they were never formally counted as such, giving the impression that there were few Indigenous slaves.

As one example, A Spanish high-level council called the Chichimec War, where the Chichimecs were fighting back against Spanish incursion on their lands, “a war by fire and blood” (89). This designation allowed Spanish soldiers and officials to capture Indigenous peoples. Once tried and found guilty of a crime, they could be sold into captivity for a specified number of years. From a legal perspective, these Indigenous peoples were not slaves but “convicts serving out their sentences” (90).