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

Abstract

Every European power with colonies in the Americas, to varying degrees, enslaved Indian peoples. Americans also owned, bought, and sold Indian slaves. Although historians and other scholars have revealed much about this pernicious practice, especially over the past two decades, understanding of the implications of widespread and multigenerational Indian slavery has not generally filtered down to public awareness or the teaching of American history. In this “hybrid work of synthesis and original research,” Andrés Reséndez shines a bright light on the North American Southwest and California as places of long-term Indian slavery and forced labor that lasted until the twentieth century (p. 322). The author of books on the travels of Cabeza de Vaca and the borderlands history of Texas and New Mexico, Reséndez is most illuminating when focusing on Mexico before and after independence and on the former Mexican territories that became part of the United States after the U.S.-Mexican War (1846–1848). The book begins with detailed information about how the enslavement of Indians by the Spanish was initiated by Christopher Columbus but built upon existing Mediterranean world slavery and slave trading.