Native Americans living in the
American Southeast
The Southeastern United States, also referred to as the American Southeast or simply the Southeast, is a geographical region of the United States. It is located broadly on the eastern portion of the southern United States and the southern por ...
were
enslaved through warfare and purchased by
European colonists in
North America
North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere and almost entirely within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and the Car ...
throughout the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, as well as held in captivity through
Spanish-organized forced labor systems in Florida. Emerging
British
British may refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies.
** Britishness, the British identity and common culture
* British English, ...
colonies
In modern parlance, a colony is a territory subject to a form of foreign rule. Though dominated by the foreign colonizers, colonies remain separate from the administration of the original country of the colonizers, the '' metropolitan state'' ...
in
Virginia
Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions of the United States, between the Atlantic Coast and the Appalachian Mountains. The geography and climate of the Commonwealth ar ...
,
Carolina (later, North and South Carolina), and
Georgia imported Native Americans and incorporated them into chattel slavery systems, where they intermixed with
slaves of African descent, who would eventually come to outnumber them. The settlers' demand for slaves affected communities as far west as present-day
Illinois
Illinois ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern United States. Its largest metropolitan areas include the Chicago metropolitan area, and the Metro East section, of Greater St. Louis. Other smaller metropolita ...
and the
Mississippi River
The Mississippi River is the second-longest river and chief river of the second-largest drainage system in North America, second only to the Hudson Bay drainage system. From its traditional source of Lake Itasca in northern Minnesota, it f ...
and as far south as the
Gulf Coast
The Gulf Coast of the United States, also known as the Gulf South, is the coastline along the Southern United States where they meet the Gulf of Mexico. The coastal states that have a shoreline on the Gulf of Mexico are Texas, Louisiana, Mississ ...
. European settlers exported tens of thousands of enslaved Native Americans outside the region to
New England
New England is a region comprising six states in the Northeastern United States: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. It is bordered by the state of New York to the west and by the Canadian provinces ...
and the
Caribbean
The Caribbean (, ) ( es, El Caribe; french: la Caraïbe; ht, Karayib; nl, De Caraïben) is a region of the Americas that consists of the Caribbean Sea, its islands (some surrounded by the Caribbean Sea and some bordering both the Caribbean Se ...
.
Natives were sometimes used as labor on
plantation
A plantation is an agricultural estate, generally centered on a plantation house, meant for farming that specializes in cash crops, usually mainly planted with a single crop, with perhaps ancillary areas for vegetables for eating and so on. The ...
s or as servants to wealthy colonist families, other times they were used as interpreters for European traders. The policies on the treatment and slavery of Native Americans varied from colony to colony in the Southeast. The Native American slave trade in the southeast relied on Native Americans trapping and selling other Natives into slavery; this trade between the colonists and the Native Americans had a profound effect on the shaping and nature of slavery in the Southeast.
[Ethridge, Robbie Franklyn, and Sheri Marie Shuck-Hall. 2009. Mapping the Mississippian Shatter Zone: The Colonial Indian Slave Trade and Regional Instability in the American South. U of Nebraska Press.] While Natives enslaved other Natives prior to the contact with the European settlers, such Native slaves were held as personal servants or to perform other tasks, not as
chattel slaves
Slavery and enslavement are both the state and the condition of being a slave—someone forbidden to quit one's service for an enslaver, and who is treated by the enslaver as property. Slavery typically involves slaves being made to perf ...
. Slaves were of little or no economic significance for Native societies. Following British settlement, a number of Native societies, armed with European firearms, oriented themselves around waging war to capture other Native people, selling them into chattel slavery. The Southeastern plantations that European settlers established greatly relied on the exploitation of enslaved human beings, with slaves comprising a key component of their workforce. The slave trade and warfare that facilitated it diminished the numbers of Native peoples in the region and drove many other Native societies to flee their homelands, breaking apart existing communities and eventually leading to a new map of peoples and ethnic groups in the region.
Structure of the trade
Slavery existed in all societies worldwide from prehistory, see
History of slavery
The history of slavery spans many cultures, nationalities, and religions from ancient times to the present day. Likewise, its victims have come from many different ethnicities and religious groups. The social, economic, and legal positions of en ...
for a global perspective and
Slavery among the indigenous peoples of the Americas
Slavery among the indigenous peoples of the Americas refers to slavery of and by the indigenous peoples of the Americas. The history of slavery spans all regions of the world; during the Pre-Columbian era, many societies in the Americas enslaved ...
for information specific to that region. Slavery practices continued and evolved as Europeans came to North America in large numbers starting in the 1600s.
In many cases the European colonists would trade with Native Americans: giving them goods and weapons, such as the
flintlock
Flintlock is a general term for any firearm that uses a flint-striking lock (firearm), ignition mechanism, the first of which appeared in Western Europe in the early 16th century. The term may also apply to a particular form of the mechanism its ...
musket, in exchange for
beaver pelt
Beavers are large, semiaquatic rodents in the genus ''Castor'' native to the temperate Northern Hemisphere. There are two extant species: the North American beaver (''Castor canadensis'') and the Eurasian beaver (''C. fiber''). Beavers ar ...
s and native people to be sold into slavery. One of the first groups to set up such agreements was the
Westo
The Westo were an Iroquoian Native American tribe encountered in the Southeastern U.S. by Europeans in the 17th century. They probably spoke an Iroquoian language. The Spanish called these people Chichimeco (not to be confused with Chichimeca i ...
s, or Richehecrians, who originally came from the north into Virginia and are said to be descendants of the
Erie
Erie (; ) is a city on the south shore of Lake Erie and the county seat of Erie County, Pennsylvania, United States. Erie is the fifth largest city in Pennsylvania and the largest city in Northwestern Pennsylvania with a population of 94,831 a ...
. After an attempt to end the agreements the Savannah people filled the role previously held by the Westos; and eventually the role fell to the Yamasee and the Creek.
The captured Native Americans were brought to the Carolina colony to be sold, and were often then resold to the Caribbean, where they would be less likely to escape, or were resold to one of the other thirteen
British colonies of North America.
This trade of slaves was not a very self-sustaining venture. Either the native population was being wiped out and those who were not being killed or captured became the captors; and as the population of natives available for capture dwindled then the captors began to fall into debt with the colonists whom they were trading with. This debt and frustration that began the Yamasee War of 1715, which would ultimately be one of the factors that lead to the demise of the trade system in the Carolinas.
[Ramsey, William L. 2003. "'Something Cloudy in Their Looks': The Origins of the Yamasee War Reconsidered." The Journal of American History 90 (1): 44–75.]
Slavery in the Southeastern colonies
British colonists in the colonies of Virginia, Carolina, and Georgia imported enslaved indigenous peoples as workers during the 17th and early 18th centuries. The
Carolina colony
Province of Carolina was a province of England (1663–1707) and Great Britain (1707–1712) that existed in North America and the Caribbean from 1663 until partitioned into North and South on January 24, 1712. It is part of present-day Alabama ...
became a major exporter of enslaved Native Americans to other colonies, including those of New England and the Caribbean. The southern colonies were known for their use of slavery to keep their large plantation economy running. It is usually assumed that all of the slaves were from Africa, but Native Americans were also frequently enslaved, and in some cases were used more than African slaves.
The Native American slave trade in the colonial Southeast was brought to its peak with the use of the European weapons as well as the trade by natives of natives in exchange for more ammunition for weapons as well as other European goods. However, the involvement of the Natives in the slavery of other Natives was not a model that would be able to sustain itself for a long time, and the depletion of 'resources'—Native Americans in this sense being the resources—coupled with Native American revolts including the
Yamasee War
The Yamasee War (also spelled Yamassee or Yemassee) was a conflict fought in South Carolina from 1715 to 1717 between British settlers from the Province of Carolina and the Yamasee and a number of other allied Native American peoples, incl ...
of 1715 would effectively become one of the factors that led to Native Americans no longer being the primary race enslaved in the colonial southeast.
[Brown, Philip M. 1975. "Early Indian Trade in the Development of South Carolina: Politics, Economics, and Social Mobility during the Proprietary Period, 1670–1719." The South Carolina Historical Magazine 76 (3): 118–28.]
Slavery in the Carolinas
Trade between Carolina colonists and native peoples was the core feature of the
Carolina Colony
Province of Carolina was a province of England (1663–1707) and Great Britain (1707–1712) that existed in North America and the Caribbean from 1663 until partitioned into North and South on January 24, 1712. It is part of present-day Alabama ...
from its founding in 1670 to the early 1700s.
European colonists offered weapons,
alcohol, and manufactured goods in exchange for animal skins and Indian slaves.
Charles Town (later
Charleston, South Carolina
Charleston is the largest city in the U.S. state of South Carolina, the county seat of Charleston County, and the principal city in the Charleston–North Charleston metropolitan area. The city lies just south of the geographical midpoint o ...
) became a major port for exporting enslaved Indians. The profits from this trade system allowed for the Carolina colony to set up its plantations which mainly produced
rice
Rice is the seed of the grass species ''Oryza sativa'' (Asian rice) or less commonly ''Oryza glaberrima
''Oryza glaberrima'', commonly known as African rice, is one of the two domesticated rice species. It was first domesticated and grown i ...
and
indigo
Indigo is a deep color close to the color wheel blue (a primary color in the RGB color space), as well as to some variants of ultramarine, based on the ancient dye of the same name. The word "indigo" comes from the Latin word ''indicum'', m ...
, and bringing with it the African slaves who would then work the plantations.
Historian Peter H. Wood found that by 1708 South Carolina's population totaled 9,580, including 4,100 African slaves and 1,400 Native American slaves.
African men composed 45% of the slave population while Native American women composed 15% of the population of adult slaves in colonial South Carolina.
Moreover, the Native American female populations outnumbered the Native American male population, and the African male population greatly outnumbered the African female population.
This imbalance encouraged unions between the two racial groups with many former slaves mentioning a notable Native American relative one or two generations before them.
The unions also lead to an obvious but unknown number of mixed children of African and Indigenous bloodlines.
By 1715 the Native American slave population in the Carolina colony was estimated at 1,850.
[Snyder (2010), "Indian Slave Trade" ]h. 2
H is the eighth letter of the Latin alphabet.
H may also refer to:
Musical symbols
* H number, Harry Halbreich reference mechanism for music by Honegger and Martinů
* H, B (musical note)
* H, B major
People
* H. (noble) (died after ...
in ''Slavery'', pp. 46–79. Prior to 1720, when it ended the Native American slave trade, Carolina exported as many or more Native American slaves than it imported Africans.
This trade system involved the Westo tribe, who had previously come down from further north. The Westos were given goods from Europe in exchange for beaver and other animal pelt and capturing natives to be sold into slavery. Colonial traders encouraged their Indian trading partners to engage in warfare and accumulate captives; they lent their backing to the
Stono War of 1674 and the Westo War of 1680.
The Goose Creek Men, a small number of planters who moved from Barbados to the Carolina colony, benefited from this trade and offered large quantities of weapons to the Westo, Savannah, Yamasee, and Siouan-speaking "Settlement Indians" to facilitate it. Colonists and their Yamasee allies went to war with the Tuscarora in 1712, defeating them and capturing hundreds as slaves.
In the first decade of the 18th century, French traders living with the Kaskaskia Illinois, and Miami peoples worked incited warfare to procure slaves for the Carolina market, as well as for sale in New France.
Slavery, especially of Native Americans, was allowed in the legislative framework of the colony with the creation of "
Slave Codes
The slave codes were laws relating to slavery and enslaved people, specifically regarding the Atlantic slave trade and chattel slavery in the Americas.
Most slave codes were concerned with the rights and duties of free people in regards to ensla ...
" soon after the creation of the colony.
As slaves, the natives were expected to hunt while the black slaves worked the plantations. As trade with the Native Americans continued, so did the slavery of Native Americans; however, due to a growing trade monopoly in the colony, some of the colonists, such as Henry Woodward, were trying to limit the amount of trade done with the natives.
However,
Queen Anne's War
Queen Anne's War (1702–1713) was the second in a series of French and Indian Wars fought in North America involving the colonial empires of Great Britain, France, and Spain; it took place during the reign of Anne, Queen of Great Britain. In E ...
(1702–1713) interrupted the building campaigns against trading and allowed for increased sales of slaves in Charleston.
Escape was relatively easy for the Native Americans, as they knew the land well and often were not far from their own people. The slave owners' solution to the problem of escaped native slaves was to send them to work in the West Indies, or to another
thirteenth colony where they would not be able to escape easily.
However, the
Yamasee War
The Yamasee War (also spelled Yamassee or Yemassee) was a conflict fought in South Carolina from 1715 to 1717 between British settlers from the Province of Carolina and the Yamasee and a number of other allied Native American peoples, incl ...
, which began in 1715, eventually ended the colony's purchase of Native Americans as slaves, making the colony more reliant upon the labor of black slaves.
Slavery in colonial Georgia
The colony of
Georgia
Georgia most commonly refers to:
* Georgia (country), a country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia
* Georgia (U.S. state), a state in the Southeast United States
Georgia may also refer to:
Places
Historical states and entities
* Related to the ...
was established in 1732, and its founder
James Oglethorpe
James Edward Oglethorpe (22 December 1696 – 30 June 1785) was a British soldier, Member of Parliament, and philanthropist, as well as the founder of the colony of Georgia in what was then British America. As a social reformer, he hoped to re ...
ensured that slavery was prohibited in the colony. However, the 1735 law which prohibited slavery only disallowed the enslavement of Africans, and not Native Americans.
Some of the first of the Native American slaves in Georgia were those brought down with the Musgrove family of South Carolina.
[Baine, Rodney M. 1995. "Indian Slavery in Colonial Georgia." The Georgia Historical Quarterly 79 (2): 418–24.] Historian Rodney Baine found that reports of purchases of Native American slaves continued in 1738, and that Indian slaves continued to work Georgia plantations in 1772.
Slavery in Florida
The
Florida peninsula
A peninsula ( la, paeninsula from ''paene'' "almost" and ''insula'' "island") is a piece of land that is bordered mostly by water but connected to mainland. The surrounding water is usually understood to be continuous, though not necessarily nam ...
was under the control of the
Spanish Empire
The Spanish Empire ( es, link=no, Imperio español), also known as the Hispanic Monarchy ( es, link=no, Monarquía Hispánica) or the Catholic Monarchy ( es, link=no, Monarquía Católica) was a colonial empire governed by Spain and its prede ...
until 1763, when for 20 years it was a British colony, the Spanish taking over again in 1783. Prior to the
British Florida
The history of Florida can be traced to when the first Native Americans began to inhabit the peninsula as early as 14,000 years ago. They left behind artifacts and archeological evidence. Florida's written history begins with the arrival of Euro ...
interval, there was a period in the early 1700s during which
Spanish Florida
Spanish Florida ( es, La Florida) was the first major European land claim and attempted settlement in North America during the European Age of Discovery. ''La Florida'' formed part of the Captaincy General of Cuba, the Viceroyalty of New Spain, ...
was a hotbed for the raiding natives from the northern Carolina and Georgia areas. Though they were left alone for the most part by one of the original raiding groups, the
Westo
The Westo were an Iroquoian Native American tribe encountered in the Southeastern U.S. by Europeans in the 17th century. They probably spoke an Iroquoian language. The Spanish called these people Chichimeco (not to be confused with Chichimeca i ...
s—who are said to be descendants of the
Erie People
The Erie people (also Eriechronon, Riquéronon, Erielhonan, Eriez, Nation du Chat) were Indigenous people historically living on the south shore of Lake Erie. An Iroquoian group, they lived in what is now western New York, northwestern Pennsylvani ...
, Spanish Florida was heavily targeted by the later raiding groups the Yamasee and Creek. These raids in which villages were destroyed and natives captured or killed drove the natives to the hands of the Spaniards, who protected them as best they could. However, the strength of the Spanish dwindled and as the raids continued, the Spanish and the natives were forced to retreat further down the peninsula. The raids were so frequent that there were barely any natives left to capture, and so the
Yamasee
The Yamasees (also spelled Yamassees or Yemassees) were a multiethnic confederation of Native Americans who lived in the coastal region of present-day northern coastal Georgia near the Savannah River and later in northeastern Florida. The Yamas ...
and
Creek began bringing fewer slaves to the Carolina colonies to continue the trade. The retreat of the Spaniards only ended when the Yamasee and Creek entered what would later be known as the
Yamasee War
The Yamasee War (also spelled Yamassee or Yemassee) was a conflict fought in South Carolina from 1715 to 1717 between British settlers from the Province of Carolina and the Yamasee and a number of other allied Native American peoples, incl ...
with the Carolina Colony.
See also
*
Slavery in the colonial United States
Slavery in the colonial history of the United States, from 1526 to 1776, developed from complex factors, and researchers have proposed several theories to explain the development of the institution of slavery and of the slave trade. Slavery stron ...
*
Indentured servitude in the Americas
Indentured servitude in British America was the prominent system of labor in the British American colonies until it was eventually supplanted by slavery. During its time, the system was so prominent that more than half of all immigrants to Britis ...
**
Indentured servitude in Pennsylvania
Indentured servitude in Pennsylvania (1682-1820s): The institution of indentured servitude has a significant place in the history of labor in Pennsylvania. From the founding of the colony (1681/2) to the early post-revolution period (1820s), ind ...
**
Indentured servitude in Virginia
Indentured servitude in continental North America began in the Colony of Virginia in 1609. Initially created as means of funding voyages for European workers to the New World, the institution dwindled over time as the labor force was replaced w ...
References
{{Native American topics, collapsed
History of the Southern United States
Spanish Florida
Pre-statehood history of Georgia (U.S. state)
Pre-statehood history of Alabama
Pre-statehood history of South Carolina
Native American history
Native American history of Florida
Native American history of Georgia (U.S. state)
Native American history of Alabama
Native American history of South Carolina
Slave trade in the United States
Slavery of Native Americans