Talk:European enslavement of Indigenous Americans/Archive 1

Debt slavery? Reliable source needed
I've flagged the following: ''In Pre-Columbian Mesoamerica the most common forms of slavery were those of prisoners of war and debtors. People unable to pay back a debt could be sentenced to work as a slave to the person owed until the debt was worked off.''

I suspect that this passage generalizes from patterns of Old World slavery and imposes them on pre-Columbian civilizations, where the concept of "debtor" (and "creditor") may be anachronistic. Bondage certainly existed, and may well have been imposed on people who were not captured in war. But if so, this needs to be explained more clearly and with good sourcing. (The cited Encyclopedia Britannica article has nothing to say about the matter.) — ℜob C. alias ᴀʟᴀʀoʙ 04:14, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

Article needs split
There are two entirely different bodies of subject matter here; indigenous slavery by other indigenous peoples, which needs a full treatment, and the separate topic of enslavement by non-indigenous poeples. Also the bad USian habit of using "Native American" for peoples not in the United States may be in teh sources provided (which are mostly USian) but it is not appropriate in Wikipedia, nor are US-only geographic references such as labelling the Haida and Tlingit as "in Southeastern Alaska" when they are also in British Columbia (I've fixed that).Skookum1 (talk) 03:55, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

Title
Is the title of this article appropriate? Seems both ambiguous and rather... Dated, if that's the right word. --Hiddekel (talk) 16:34, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

the title is not appropriate and may confuse people not familiar with this strange mistake. geographical knowledge of India and its relative position and distance from Europe had been documented before 1492. No need to perpetuate columbus' ignorance 500+ years into the future, especially when such confuses and offends. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.11.130.71 (talk) 18:02, 4 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Does anyone disagree? Should it be moved to, say, Native American slavery? Something else? Most American (US) texts still use the term "Indian slavery", but I can see how that is a problematic page name for an encyclopedia of global scope. I realize "Native American" is also a mostly-US term, but at least it avoids the confusing with the Asian nation of India. Pfly (talk) 06:12, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

The title does need to be changed to Native American slavery. I'll move it soon. It's more politically correct (Native Americans). The term Indians is not exactly considered a positive term when addressing native peoples of the Americas.Mcelite (talk) 04:27, 9 September 2009 (UTC)


 * I'm changing the title tomarrow it needs to be updated and more proper links need to be made to the article.Mcelite (talk) 05:35, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

Ongoing abuse of USian term "Native Americans"
I noticed in the edit comparison of the item about slavery and cannibalism in Brazil this line:
 * ''After the arrival of the Portuguese, the Native Americans started to trade their prisoners, instead of using them as slaves or food, in exchange for goods

Which is WHOLLY inappropriate though made in good faith, no doubt, by someone whose vocabulary was learned in the US school system and from US media; it's incorrect; the neutral term to use is "indigenous people", cumbersome though it is; Brazilian Indians are NOT "Native Americans",a term which is delimited (to everybody but USians) by the US border and does NOT apply to native peoples anywhere else in the Americas.....it's just plain wrong, and decidedly USPOV in tone, as if the USian usage were the only correct one in English, which is utterly, utterly wrong. This is a global document, this wikipedia, thing, and it should STOP sounding like a Grade 9 US textbook (or, if you will, in USian, a ninth grade textbook).Skookum1 (talk) 05:28, 5 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Yet you insist on using the odd term USian. Can you explain the logic behind that? Why do you not call them Americans? Because America is a continent, and it should not be used to refer to the people of a single country on that continent? Oh, but you insist that the indigenous peoples of that continent we call America, a name that should not be monopolized by the people of a single nation, cannot be called Native Americans. Why? I can only surmise your motive is bigotry, otherwise you'd call the people of the United States of America Americans rather than your oddly EU-bureaucracy-sounding term "USian". Figure out why you want the rest of us to indulge your weirdly contradictory position without suspecting some kind of anti-American animus.206.39.60.5 (talk) 12:47, 9 October 2014 (UTC)


 * And let me add this. You say this is a "global document." What does that even mean? There are 287 Wikipedias. Are they all global too? The one in Pennsylvania Dutch? Do you hold those to the same "global" standard? Shouldn't everything be written in Esperanto? I mean, it makes no sense to claim this is global, yet include articles that are written in languages spoken by a few hundred people, as well as some not spoken by anyone in over a thousand years. There are 491 articles written in Gothic. What standard of globality do you apply to those articles? No. Wikipedia is not global. It is local. The knowledge is global, and access is global, and the Wikimedia project overall is global, but articles are meant to be written so that they are accessible and understandable to the smallest subset possible. As local as possible. So take your anti-American bigotry and stuff it.206.39.60.5 (talk) 13:07, 9 October 2014 (UTC)

Untitled
I've asked for a citation for this sentence: "Enslaved Native Americans generally died after a short time in the conditions of plantation slavery." I've heard that idea here and there, but I'm unconvinced that Indian slaves died in significantly greater numbers than African or European slaves under the same conditions. My impression is that Indian slavery was generally given up by Europeans after African slaves became readily available at affordable prices -- Indian slaves were apt to run away and much more able to find safe haven than Africans were. For this reason, northern colonies like New York and New England bought Indian slaves from South Carolina, so they would not be able to run away to their own people and would stand out as foreign Indians due to speech, mannerism, tattoos, etc. The final reason Indian slavery was given up, at least north of the Caribbean and Mexico, was not because Indians died too easily, but because the early colonies realized the degree to which they depended on Indian alliances. By the early 1700s, the English were very actively seeking alliances with nearly every major Indian tribe in eastern America. Indian slavery operated by setting one tribe against another and encouraging war, so that the war captives could be sold to the English. The system required that some tribes be enemies of the English, to justify their enslavement. By the early 1700s, this was working against the larger need for strong alliances with the Indians (such as the Iroquois, Cherokee, Creek, Chickasaw, and Choctaw; all of which had been sources of slaves or slave-raiders at one point or another). This, coupled with the growing availability of African slaves effectively ended the Indian slave system, rather than something about Indians making "bad slaves", as is sometimes claimed. I've gotten this perspective from Alan Gallay's book "The Indian Slave Trade", Meinig's "Shaping of America" books, and others.

That's why I put in the "citation needed". I'm sure there are plenty of sources that make this claim, but I'd like to see one that really stands up against the well researched work of Gallay, because I suspect the idea is a kind of "American myth" -- often claimed without much to back it up. Thanks! Pfly 19:25, 10 November 2006 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure I put that language in the article, but if I did I was thinking about the early Spanish plantations in Florida which failed as the enslaved Indians failed to survive plantation conditions. I'll try to find a decent source. You seem to address slavery in the American colonies which is another matter. In Mexico male African slaves commanded a price of about 10 times that of a male indigent slave because a great deal more work could be gotten out of them in conditions of slavery. User:Fred Bauder Talk 06:10, 8 February 2018 (UTC)


 * I see that indeed, I did create the article and added the offending language. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Slavery_among_the_indigenous_peoples_of_the_Americas&oldid=1561002 User:Fred Bauder Talk 06:14, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

I think " Although slavery is illegal throughout the Americas, some Indigenous peoples are still enslaved today.[1]" should be removed.
The supporting link goes to an article about the sex and slave trafficking in south america. While slavery is the topic, the historic perspective of the article immediately degrades. I think information about modern slave trade and human trafficking needs its own page. I'd like a second opinion. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Camoguard (talk • contribs) 14:16, 2 April 2014 (UTC)


 * Provided it is well sourced and relevant, such information should be included. I'm hard pressed to think of a North American example though. User:Fred Bauder Talk 07:15, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

Encomienda and slavery
The line "The encomienda system was an agreement between the Council of the Indies and the Spanish crown to exchange education and protection from warring tribes for the use of the land owned by the caciques, lords, or encomienderos and the promise of seasonal labour." should be removed for a number of reasons: First the encomienda system is not slavery, more like forced temporal labour, very much like in feudal Europe. You just need to read the related Wikipedia article to realize. The article's mention makes it sound as if it was slavery. Second, the Council of Indies was an administrative organ of the Spanish Crown. There was no possible "agreement" between both of them, because the Council is dependent on the Crown and carries out the Crown's will in the Americas. I can't help but wonder about the reliability of the sources for this article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.39.56.51 (talk) 12:31, 31 August 2015 (UTC)


 * The effect of the encomienda system varied with location, on Espaniola where it was used to work natives to death in the mines, it was one thing, in Mexico, as applied to the Indians of central Mexico, it was quite another, and, as you say, like the brief feudal labour requirements made of vassals. "forced temporal labour" sound rather like slavery, however. User:Fred Bauder Talk 07:20, 8 February 2018 (UTC)


 * The "will" of the crown from the earliest years was no slavery. Obviously there was some trouble in fully implementing that policy. User:Fred Bauder Talk 07:22, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

Section on Europeans and Indian/indigenous slavery needs work
This is all over the place and needs some basic facts. First, the French, English and Spanish apparently all enslaved or tried to enslave indigenous peoples, and mostly gave it up. The article should give some information about how each of the three colonial powers treated indigenous peoples, how long they held them in slavery, what factors made them stop, and when they stopped. Also, it would be useful if there were some acknowledgement of the complications that racial attitudes played in white relations with indigenous; there was a tendency to consider indigenous people mixed with those of African descent as somehow losing their claim to indigenous ethnicity. The article should also include the dates when each of the colonial powers ended Indian/indigenous slavery, and why. There also has to be some acknowledgement of the other forms of interaction. To say a few French-Canadians married indigenous slave women ignores the many informal unions and marriages they had with indigenous women who weren't slaves; for one thing, a new ethnic group, the Metis, formed from those relationships.Parkwells (talk) 01:49, 27 April 2016 (UTC)
 * A lot of good points. User:Fred Bauder Talk 07:28, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

New book
I would like to recommend a new book, The Other Slavery to anyone editing this article. WriterArtistDC (talk) 00:25, 21 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Thanks for this useful source. Any way you may want to help with the article? Caballero /  Historiador ⎌  21:52, 13 December 2016 (UTC)


 * I am an editor who does not believe in the basic value of Wikipedia. My experience has been that there is no crowd, so there is no crowdsourcing. Within the small circle of articles I contribute to, there only me, being an old fashioned academic. I would prefer that people get their information directly from reliable sources, such as the one I recommended above. I continue to maintain the articles within my area of expertise (psychology not history), only for pragmatic reasons. "Better to light a candle than curse the darkness"? A pragmatist can do both.--WriterArtistDC (talk) 05:57, 14 December 2016 (UTC)
 * I can understand the way you feel. Anyhow, I am glad you are here, still pushing through. I was not aware of this particular publication. Seems meant for a larger readership. Cheers, Caballero /  Historiador ⎌  10:28, 14 December 2016 (UTC)


 * Using The Other Slavery which is available on Kindle for a reasonable price. User:Fred Bauder Talk 07:43, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

Rewriting the lede
At this moment the article shows a template calling for a rewriting of the lede, but it also ask to discuss the issue in the talkpage first. Any thoughts? Let's follow protocol. Share your ideas for the lede and lets organize the way to improve it. Caballero / Historiador ⎌  21:52, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

The outlandish, incorrect claim that chattel slavery was introduced by the Europeans is idiotic. Perhaps someone with a knowledge of history should help out here, instead of this revisionist pseudo intellectual crap.


 * Many different Indian cultures. Endemic tribal warfare was usual, and there were captives. Some were not killed. That is where it starts. Customs varied. User:Fred Bauder Talk 07:45, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

Clarifying and organizing scope
What you have done is wrong. Slavery among indigenous people is a terrible title. It should read Slaver Of Indigenous People By Europeans. Native Americans were slave owners well before Europeans arrived. It is very well documented. If your change was correct this would be indicated in the article. IT IS NOT.

I've restored this article's title to Slavery among the indigenous peoples of the Americas. Right now the articles on this topic are a bit of a mess, with no central main article organizing the different geographic and temporal scopes together. We have
 * Slavery among the indigenous peoples of the Americas — article, but mostly written about North America
 * Slavery in Pre-Columbian Americas — redirects here
 * Enslavement of indigenous peoples in North America — redirects here
 * Indian Slavery — redirects here
 * New World slavery — redirects here
 * Slavery in the Spanish New World colonies — a functional article; has brief section on "Indigenous People"
 * Slavery in Brazil — a functional article; slavery of Indians is included but not in a separate section.
 * Slavery among Native Americans in the United States — a very long article with several subarticles and long sections
 * #Native American slavery — Essentially a pre-contact slavery article for the US context
 * Indian slave trade in the American Southeast — a functional article
 * History of enslavement of indigenous peoples in California — a functional article
 * History of slavery in New Mexico — a functional article concerning enslavement of Indians, as well as Africans and contemporary victims of human trafficking
 * History of slavery in Utah — Indian slavery is one of two sections.

At a minimum, this page should provide an overview of the listed situations and make it easy to navigate among them. Maybe a navigation box is also in order.

I further propose that we build out this article and relevant subarticle using the principles in Summary style.--Carwil (talk) 04:49, 20 June 2017 (UTC)


 * The Other Slavery is mostly about Spanish America. What I'm adding does not help at all with the organization of the article as a whole. User:Fred Bauder Talk 07:48, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

Needs to be more comprehensive, less detailed
Given that this is an article on the enslavement of millions of people across an entire hemisphere for millennia, the current structure of the article needs comprehensive revision. Currently, the article goes into serious depth on just a few topics (e.g., early Spanish enslavement of Caribbean natives) without covering several important topics at all (e.g. indigenous slavery in New England). I intend to work on this in the future (hopefully).

SilverStar54 (talk) 23:41, 7 August 2021 (UTC)

Having made some significant changes to the page, adding more sources, reorganizing it along more logical lines, and improving the tone in some key places, I have removed the issue markers and raised the article from start to c class. I am open to discussing this further if anyone believes more changes are needed first.

SilverStar54 (talk) 02:08, 19 August 2021 (UTC)

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Peer reviewers: Chlostall.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 09:28, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: ARCN 211 Material Histories of Labor
— Assignment last updated by Sak201 (talk) 13:40, 24 January 2023 (UTC)

Preliminary Bibliography

 * 1) Acharya, Arun Kumar. “Prevalence of Violence Against Indigenous Women Victims of Human Trafficking and Its Implications on Physical Injuries and Disabilities in Monterrey City, Mexico.” Health Care for Women International, vol. 40, no. 7-9, 2019, pp. 829–46, https://doi.org/10.1080/07399332.2018.1564612.
 * 2) Cameron, Catherine M. "Captives and culture change: implications for archaeology." Current Anthropology 52.2 (2011): 169-209.
 * 3) Coe, Michael D. “The Ancient Sun Kingdoms of the Americas: Aztec, Maya, Inca. Victor W. Von Hagen. World Publishing Co., Cleveland, 1961. 620 Pp., Frontis., 164 Figs., 54 Pis. (4 in Color). $12.50.” American Antiquity, vol. 28, no. 2, 1962, pp. 259–260., doi:10.2307/278403.
 * 4) Ebbe, Obi N. I., and Dilip K. Das. “Criminal Abuse of Women and Children: An International Perspective.” CRC Press, 2009, pp. xxiii–xxiii, https://doi.org/10.1201/9781420088045.
 * 5) Gayton, A. H. "Essays in Pre-Columbian Art and Archaeology. Samuel K. Lothrop and Others (27 essays). Harvard University Press, 1961. viii+ 507 pp., 230 figs., 4 tables, 2 charts. $12.50." American Antiquity 28.2 (1962): 257-259.
 * 6) Gozdziak, Elzbieta M., and Elizabeth A. Collett. “Research on Human Trafficking in North America: A Review of Literature.” International Migration., vol. 43, no. 1-2, 2005, pp. 99–128, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0020-7985.2005.00314.x.
 * 7) Halperin, Christina T. "Ancient cosmopolitanism: Feminism and the rethinking of Maya inter-regional interactions during the Late Classic to Postclassic periods (ca. 600–1521 CE)." Journal of Social Archaeology 17.3 (2017): 349-375.
 * 8) Joyce, R.A.. “Wealth, Women’s Labour, and Forms of Value: Thinking from the Study of Ancestral Central America.” The Critique of Archaeological Economy. Frontiers in Economic History, edited by Gimatzidis, S., Jung, R. Springer, Cham, 2021, p. 35-53. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72539-6_3
 * 9) Smith, Michael E. "Life in the Provinces of the Aztec Empire." Scientific American 277.3 (1997): 76-83.
 * 10) Sofía de la Mora Tostado, et al. “Human Trafficking in Mexico: Data Sources, Network Analysis and the Limits of Dismantling Strategies.” arXiv.org, 2022.

Mayoralg (talk) 13:53, 24 January 2023 (UTC)

84000 sacrificed
I removed the passage in which it is stated that Aztec writings claim 84000 people were sacrificed in the dedication of an Aztec temple in the 15th century. According to the cited article, the writings in question were actually 16th and 17th century post-conquest Spanish Colonial accounts. The article goes on to state that while human sacrifice may have been common, such a figure is inaccurate by orders of magnitude. This is quite an egregious example of disingenuous citation of source material. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.158.163.70 (talk) at 01:07, 5 December 2008

Native Americans Owned Slaves BEFORE Europeans arrived.
Native Americans Owned Slaves BEFORE Europeans arrived. Where is this discussed? This is a biased article inferring that native americans where only victims. This is patently false.