Slavery in Colonial Mexico

Slavery in Mexico by Shep Lenchek, published on 1 Jan. 2001:  According to the reports of the first Europeans to visit the New World, slavery was almost universal in what is now Mexico and Central America. Theoretically, with the arrival of Europeans, that should have changed.

In 1493 Pope Alexander VI, while granting Spain the right to colonize the New World, mandated that the indigenous people be converted to Catholicism and prohibited their enslavement. However, he added a "catch 22" by going on to say that those who did not accept Christianity or reverted to their old religion, should be punished and could be enslaved. More positively, in 1500, Queen Isabella of Spain had expressly ordered, "all the Indians of the Spaniards were to be free from slavery." This order had no ifs or buts. When she died in 1504, her will instructed her successors to continue these policies.

Thus, when in 1519 Cortes and the Conquistadors invaded Mexico, both Spanish and Papal Law seemingly protected the Indians from enslavement. It is not surprising that Cortes, whose very invasion of Mexico was an illegal rebellion against the order of his superior, the Governor of Cuba, ignored the order of the Queen, and used the aforementioned "catch 22" to remain in compliance with the Papal order. As they moved toward Tenochtitlan, the Spaniards went through the motions of converting the Indians but offered them no religious instruction. The erection of a Cross, a speech outlining the virtues of Christianity by La Malinche and the destruction of the local idols was the standard procedure.

It was not until 1524, after the Aztecs had been conquered and enslaved, that 10 Franciscan Priests and 2 lay brothers arrived. Now, real religious instruction was offered to the Indians. In 1526, 12 Dominicans followed them. The first Jesuits who ultimately were to carry the main burden of religious instruction, did not arrive until 1572. Thus, in 1521 when Cortes gave his followers vast tracts of land called encomiendas, all indigenous people living within the boundaries of these land grants were bound to the land as slaves. Simply baptized, without follow up, it was easy to claim they had reverted to the worship of their old Gods. Thus the ecomienderos could claim they were in compliance with the second part of the Pope's directive. Recognized by the Spanish Crown as the military governor of New Spain, largely unsupervised, Cortes ran Nueva Espagna until 1526.

The first person to challenge this illegal enslavement was Father Bartoleme de las Casas. Long an opponent of slavery, he had fought against, it in both Santo Domingo and Cuba with little success, before coming to Mexico. Ironically, his proposed solution to enslavement of indigenous people was to import black slaves from Africa. Some effort was made to do this but the Portuguese who controlled the slave trade charged high prices and the number of black slaves available was not sufficient to meet the needs of the colony. Records indicate that about 6000 African slaves reached Mexico.

Those who did arrive remained largely in the Vera Cruz area and worked mostly in the sugar cane fields and factories. Perhaps this indicates that the Indians who lived near Vera Cruz, the first permanent Spanish settlement, had indeed received religious instruction in addition to baptism. Returning to Spain, in 1542 de Las Casas persuaded Emperor Charles V to promulgate "New Laws" that once again outlawed slavery. Returning to Santo Domingo, he was unable to gain acceptance for these laws. Appointed Bishop of Chiapas, he returned to Mexico. Here too, he met with no success.

Actually, the economy of Nueva Espagna depended almost entirely on slave labor. Agriculture and mining were labor intensive and need young, strong bodies. The recruiting of young male immigrants in Spain was impossible. The country was involved in European wars and the Army took all the able bodied young men who might have been willing to seek their fortune in the new world. After 1535 when the first Viceroy, Antonio de Mendoza had restored order to the Colony, some immigration started. The first to come in any number were "Conversos." Forcibly baptized Jews, they were mostly doctors, lawyers, teachers and business men who were fleeing the Inquisition. They brought much need skills but did not replace slaves.

Map of the Vice-royalty of New Spain

In the final analysis, while Bartoleme de las Casas failed to end slavery, he was the first voice within the Church to speak out against it and set a precedent that it was the duty of the Church to protect the Indians. Due to his influence, Juan de Zumarraga, the first Archbishop of Mexico who arrived in 1528 proclaimed himself as "Protector of the Indians. " He had recognized the impossibility of ending slavery. His approach was to attempt to regulate it. Cortes had gone back to Spain. An Audiencia, a court, dominated by Nuneo de Guzman, a bitter enemy of Cortes, was running the colony. He had launched a program of extortion and enslavement against the Indians. Spaniards who remained loyal to Cortes were also persecuted. It was not until Cortes returned to the colony in 1530, that Guzman was ousted and a second Audiencia took over. With this new Court in place, the treatment of the Indians improved although slavery was still their lot. Now, Archbishop Zumarraga and Vasco de Quiroga who he had appointed Bishop of Michoacan, brought churches, schools and hospitals to the indigenous people both enslaved on ecomiendas, the original land grants made to the Conquistadors and those still free and living in their own villages.

It was the new Viceroy who actually did the most for the indigenous people. While he recognized the impossibility of abolishing existing slavery, he set some standards for their treatment. No Indian, slave or otherwise could be forced to carry a load of more than 100 lbs. To protect the supposedly "free" Indians employed in the mines, government officials were appointed to collect and distribute their wages. In some cases a local priest performed this duty.

The system set up by the new colonial government to run the colony was based on strong municipal governments. Like other cities, native municipalities were also recognized as semi-autonomous units, with Indian officials handling local matters under the supervision of appointed Spaniards. Soon, the descendants of the original Conquistadors began to demand the same kind of land-grants received by their parents. To protect the remaining Indian villages from their encroachment, the Viceroy now set up the Ejido system. It granted title to land to a tribe, a village, a clan or even an extended family. The land was designated to be used solely for agriculture. It could not be divided and sold by individual Ejidoistas. This protection lasted until 1856, long after Mexico gained it's Independence from Spain. Ironically, it was the Liberal Party, headed by Benito Juarez, himself an Indian, that destroyed the system. There can be little doubt that it was this system that slowed down the enslavement of the Indians.

Under the Viceroys, "forced labor" to build roads, rather than slavery became the lot of the "free" indigenous people. In a sense, it was a form of tribute exacted by the Colonial Government in lieu of cash payment of taxes. Due to epidemics of smallpox, first in 1520 and again in 1545, 1576 and 1629, by 1630 the Indian population had shrunk to less than 800,000 from an estimated 10 to 12 million in the days before the Conquest. The majority of those who died were slaves who were in close contact with Europeans. The survival rate of those who lived in Indian villages or on Ejidos was much higher. A change from raising crops to raising cattle, much less labor intensive, also slowed the need for slaves. Now the Indian population grew rapidly. While population figures are not wholly reliable, in 1650 Mexico's total population was recorded at about 1.7 million. 1.3 million were Indians.

Now government controlled labor drafts called repartimientos, rather than slaves, provided workers to the Spanish-owned estates and mines at salaries set by the government. While the Plan of Iguala, proposed by Augustin de Iturbe in 1820 had abolished slavery, it was not until 1824 that a Constitution was adopted that actually freed them. Even so, it was not until 1829 that the last slaves were freed. Slavery did survive in the part of Mexico that is now Texas. Indeed, Mexican efforts to free slaves played an important role in the formation of the Republic of Texas. It was largely fueled by the desire of " Gringo" slave owners to retain their chattels.

Slavery in Colonial Mexico was quite different from that in the American South. The bulk of those enslaved remained on the land where they were born. There was no large scale buying and selling of Indian slaves. Even the blacks imported from Africa, like the Indians, were incorporated into the encomiendo system that bound them and their descendants to a particular plantation or hacienda. Over 75 percent of modern Mexico's population, have at least one Indian or Mulatto ancestor. The vast majority of them were slaves. Ironically, it is the Indians, never enslaved, who retreated into largely inaccessible mountain and jungle areas, that today make up the most destitute and deprived population in modern Mexico.  (source: mexconnect.com)

Written Out of History: American Indian Enslavement

Written Out of History blends historical facts with accounts of the forgotten legacy of Native American slavery told by indigenous scholars and anthropologists.

Originally shot on location in North America, Europe, and the Caribbean, this artistic documentary reconstructs for the first time on camera the events that led to the erasure of indigenous forced labour from the annals of history.

Written out of History

Written out of History from Simolab-Creative AV on Vimeo.

Chapter 2: The First Slaves

Chapter Two: The First Slaves

Out of a swampy thicket, near the blue waters of Long Island Sound, 200 old men, women and children stepped into the bright sunshine and entered a new world.

Hundreds of edgy soldiers, mustered from villages and farms across Connecticut, had finally surrounded the Pequots and their leader, Sassacus.

It was July 13, 1637, a critical day in the Pequot War that had consumed Puritan Connecticut for several years. Six weeks before, in a key victory for the colonists, Capt. John Mason had led a massacre at the Pequot fort in Mystic, killing as many as 700 Indians in a single hour.

attack on the Pequot fort at Mystic

This summer afternoon was a jubilant one for the Puritans and their Mohegan scouts who had cornered these "most terrible" Pequots. A new chapter in American history was about to begin: Indian enslavement in Colonial America.

Among the Pequots caught in the bog in what's now part of Fairfield, a group of perhaps 17, mostly children, were thought to have been exported as slaves. Others were handed out to soldiers as wartime booty. Historians believe these 17 Pequots later ended up on an island off Nicaragua. Like many of the Indian slaves sent from America over the next century, there is little record of what happened to them.

Barely five years after their first recorded contact with Europeans, this final battle of the bloody Pequot War conclusively finished a doomed experiment by Indians and Puritans to live side by side. By the time the Treaty of Hartford was signed the following September, formally ending the war, the English had killed or enslaved more than 1,500 Pequot men, women and children, scholars believe.

During the uneasy decades that followed, as the Puritans pushed deeper into Indian country and their numbers swelled, it was difficult to travel through Connecticut, Massachusetts or Rhode Island and not encounter an Indian slave, working in a field, orchard or boatyard.

By the end of the 1600s, there were probably thousands of Indian slaves, many of them servants in homes and on farms. It would become, in the words of Roger Williams, a founder of Brown University, an essential component of "the Unnecessary Warrs and cruell Destructions of the Indians in New England."

In Connecticut and throughout New England, where, 350 years later, descendants of Indians and Europeans still have an uneasy relationship, Indian slavery remains a rarely recited part of our history.

Wampanoag, longhouse

"There are a lot of things that people in America don't have any idea about,"' said Everett "Tall Oak" Weeden, an Indian historian who shares both Pequot and Wampanoag ancestry. "History has been sanitized."

The Indians `have their eyes fixed upon us'

A primal fear of Indians, a desperate shortage of labor, a biblical sense of entitlement - these forces coalesced, leading to the enslavement of the Native Americans in southern New England in the 1600s. The colonists ultimately thought of the conflict as the "civilized" English against the "savage" natives.

"Partly it's social control. But they also want the labor. People wanted household servants," said Margaret Newell, a professor at Ohio State University who is writing a book on Indian slavery.

In Rhode Island and Massachusetts, and to a lesser extent in Connecticut, Newell said, "You would find [Indian] women working as domestic servants, taking care of children. You would find men working as farm laborers, drivers. You would find children taking care of livestock."

For some Indians, servitude lasted only until age 24. But others were bound to masters for indefinite periods. Indian slaves and household servants appear on census rolls and court records well into the 18th century.

This was a time of growing divisions and bloody violence between the native populations and the Puritans. As the colonists sought to settle in to their new home in America, there were conflicts, small and large, all over. It was a time of murdered women and children, of severed limbs and smashed corpses, when it was not uncommon to see Indian and English heads mounted on stakes, wigwams burned and frontier farms devastated.

For many Indians, Mason's brutal Pequot massacre and others after it remained fresh. For the colonists, the scalpings and mutilations, which included flayings and torture, seemed too monstrous for any true Englishman to ever accept.

By the beginning of King Philip's War in 1675, when Indians attacked and destroyed town after town in New England, it would be difficult to overestimate the fear English colonists felt as they sought to conquer and subdue New England. After a string of stunningly successful Indian attacks at the start of the conflict, Puritans were well aware that "all the Indians have their eyes fixed upon us."

Thousands of English and Indians would perish in the bloody two-year conflict, named for a regal Wampanoag sachem, or chief, whose father, Massasoit, sat with the Pilgrims at the first Thanksgiving feast. By the end of 1675, it was full-scale battle across New England.

"Many of our miserable inhabitants lye naked, wallowing in their blood, and crying, and whilst the Barbarous enraged Natives, from one part of the Country to another are in Fire, flaming their fury, Spoiling Cattle and Corn and burning Houses and torturing Men, Women and Children," wrote one unidentified colonist, quoted in historian Jill Lepore's revealing 1998 book, "The Name of War."

The Indian threat "strained even the most eloquent colonists' powers of description," Lepore writes of a time early in the war when Indians nearly drove the Puritans from New England's interior.

"I was so struck by how strident and how fearful these people were," University of Connecticut anthropologist Kevin McBride said of his research into Indians and Puritans of the 1600s. "These guys must have been panicked."

Enslaving the problems

As the 17th century wore on, and colonists grew to outnumber natives in New England by about 2 to 1, Indians were increasingly pursued. A systematic divvying up of captives from the many Connecticut tribes emerged. The colonists originally focused on the more warlike Pequots, but soon members of the Narragansetts, Nipmucks and Wampanoags were also enslaved.

"The general court appointed certain persons in each county to receive and distribute these Indian children proportionately, and to see that they were sold to good families," wrote Almon W. Lauber in his 1913 book, "Indian Slavery in Colonial Times."

"The custom of enslavement came from the necessity of disposing of war captives, from the greed of traders and from the demand for labor," explained Lauber, whose book is still considered an essential reference.

Captured Indian warriors were frequently executed - or shipped to slave markets around the world. By the time King Philip's War began, Indian slaves, often women and children, were a common sight across southern New England.

From Newport, R.I., to Portsmouth, N.H., Indians came to public auction, "tied neck to neck," and sold for half of what an African might bring.

A 7-year-old girl was toted to Connecticut from a battle in Massachusetts, a spoil of war who was handy around the house. At times, there were so many captured Indians available that a few bushels of corn or 100 pounds of wool sufficed for payment. A New London man left "an Indian maidservant" as part of his estate. Another, a farmer and businessman from the New London area, kept a careful diary noting how common Indian slaves were on the farms and in the homes of southeastern Connecticut.

And on sailing ships, bound for the slave markets in Europe, Africa, the Caribbean and the Azores, Indians were packed away tightly by the profiteers, who kidnapped or bought them wholesale from Colonial authorities eager to finance an increasingly costly war against the Indians.

Indians who surrendered were treated only slightly more gently in the colony, with the Connecticut General Court ordering children sold as indentured servants for 10-year terms, though some would be slaves far longer if they got into legal trouble in Puritan courts.

A note left by attacking Nipmuck Indians after the plundering of Medfield, Mass., in February 1676 reveals much about the time: "We have nothing but our lives to loose but thou has many fair houses and cattell & much good things."

The rewards of war

In the fall of 1676 the sailing ship Seaflower departed Boston Harbor for the Caribbean, its cargo hold filled with nearly 200 "heathen Malefactors men, women and children" sentenced to "Perpetuall Servitude & slavery."

As Lepore recounts in her book - one of the few published scholarly examinations of Indian slavery - the sale and lucrative export of Indians had become by 1676 one of "the rewards of war" that replenished "coffers emptied by wartime expenses." Despite government efforts to regulate it, much of the trade was conducted illegally and ruthlessly.

The slave export began to heat up in 1675 and 1676, when captives from the rapidly expanding King Philip's War were filling New England cities, further frightening the English. Most of the Indians captured and exported out of New England were from Massachusetts, whose towns suffered the most from Indian attacks.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the colonists also found that adult Indian males who were kept as slaves made poor servants here. Mason said as much, when he wrote of captives from the Pequot War: "They could not endure that Yoke; few of them continuing any considerable time with their masters."

African-Indian intermarriage

Records of Indian slaves turn up well into the 18th century, but the practice faded rapidly in the 1700s, because of a growing market for African slaves and the widespread elimination of Indians and their culture. Scholars like Lepore also said that New England at this time began to see itself as a place that celebrated liberty and a growing anti-slavery movement.

Meanwhile, the eradication of Indian males through war, ravaging diseases and slavery led to significant intermarriage between native women and African males in the 18th century and beyond. Thus, as researchers like McBride and Newell note, the arrival of African slaves would help assure the survival of some Indian communities into the 21st century - while also setting the stage for some of the racial tension today.

Narragansett woman dressed up for a powwow

"Slavery really did have a devastating impact on the Native American population. Men were more likely to be exported. You had some tribes and populations where the ratio of women to men is completely out of whack," said Newell.

In the 20th century this would lead to tribes, such as the Narragansett and Pequots, with members who, to an outsider, look distinctly African American - but who nevertheless descend from historic New England tribes.

For many modern Indians in southern New England, slavery remains an essential and too-little-discussed element of their being, a chapter that must be acknowledged to understand the dynamics of today's often fragile relationship between Indians and non-Indians.

Back to the past

Wampanoag, Pequot and Narrangansett in St. David's Island. 2003

This year, on the 365th anniversary of the Fairfield "swamp fight" of 1637, "Tall Oak" Weeden and a delegation of Wampanoag Indians and Mashantucket Pequots went hunting for remnants of this forgotten slavery era.

Searching for clues, they traveled to St. David's Island in Bermuda. There they met with a small clan claiming to be descendants of New England Indian slaves shipped there centuries ago. Those who went came away convinced they had struck gold when they saw the faces, the dances and rituals of the St. David's Indians.

"I was struck by how much they looked like us," said Michael J. Thomas, a Mashantucket tribal leader who went on the Bermuda trip this past summer.

According to local legend, the wife and son of King Philip might have been among those on St. David's. After the king's death, his wife, Wootonekanuske, is said to have married an African man, preserving a genealogical line with Indians in New England.

The Pequots, flush with casino wealth and in the midst of their own 21st century resurgence, plan to dig even further into slavery's hidden history, Thomas said.

"What's to be learned is a more accurate perception of Colonial-era history," he said. "It helps people to understand our insecurities of today."

source: Green, Rick. Hartford Courant. "Chapter Two: The First Slaves: For Early Colonists, Indians Were A Bloody Enemy And The Spoils Of War." 29September2002

Encomienda: Spanish Slavery in the New World

The Encomienda System was established in response to the colonists' need for Indian labour, but became the most destructive system in the history of Spanish America.

When the Spanish arrived in the New World, they brought with them a set of customs and traditions from their old Spain. One of the systems that were commonly practiced in Western Europe was forced labour. In Spain, this was knownas the Encomienda system. An encomienda was a means of providing a Spaniard a portion of land and restricted property rights over a certain number of Indians. The Encomienda system quickly became entrenched in South and Central America. Although it was implemented with the intention to care for and provide for the Native Americans, it became the most abusive and destructive system in colonial New Spain.

The Need to Indoctrinate and Instruct Natives in the Catholic Faith

The Spanish used religion to justify their domination over the Native Americans. The conquistadors maintained it was God’s will that they indoctrinate the Native Americans in the Catholic faith. Under the law of Burgos, any encomendero with more than fifty Natives had to educate one boy in writing and religious doctrine so that he could in turn, teach his people these things. “Some of the Native communities were even divided into territorial doctrinas or parishes with its own priest and church building where Indians would be instructed about the Christian faith,” says Michael Busbin. However, this method “quickly became an opportunity for the encomenderos to exploit and utilize the Indians for their own ends,” says Meredith Scott.

The Belief the Native Americans Were Incompetent

The need to Christianize the Natives was not the only reason for the Spanish to establish the encomienda system. The common belief that the Native Americans were savage and incompetent people unable to live a Christian life and conduct money and trade, fuelled the Spaniards’ desire to establish the encomienda system. Consequently, the Spaniards believed the Natives needed to be clothed, educated and taught about God. If they were left on their own, they would not cooperate with the Spaniards in matters of commerce, and so would ruin New Spain’s economy.

The Responsibility of Encomenderos

King Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain issued an order stating that all encomenderos were forbidden to mistreat the Natives. However, at the same time, they granted the encomenderos the right to persuade the natives to abandon their pagan religions and traditions.

Although the encomenderos were fully responsible for the Natives on their land, the Natives were granted to them for only two or three years at a time. The encomenderos were to pay the Natives a sum for their work and supply them with the provisions they needed to live. At one point, the Catholic Monarchs even encouraged intermarriage between the Spanish and the Natives as a way to completely assimilate the Natives into Spanish society.

Native Americans as a Source of Immediate Revenue

The Conquistadors, however, ignored the King and Queen’s commands. The Spanish colonists desired wealth without having to work for it. Every Spanish colonist that came to the New World expected to own land and have the natives do all the work for them. The natives were stripped of their rights because they were seen as a source of immediate revenue for the encomenderos.

The encomenderos demanded the natives pay them tribute in response to the provisions they gave them. The natives were forced to work night and day with very little to no pay in return. “This eventually led to the death of many already down-trodden Indians,” says Michael Busbin. In fact the abuse encomiendas inflicted on their Natives took place for several years and, consequently, led to a sharp decline in the Native population in Spanish America. It was not until the middle of the sixteenth century that the Spanish Crown would finally take action against the destruction that was being wrought upon the Natives at the hands of the Spanish colonists in its overseas colonies. (source: Latin America)

IndiVisible: African-Native American Lives in the Americas

Gamble-Williams, an educator, artist and community activist, and her husband, Thunder Williams, of Afro-Carib ancestry from Trinidad and Tobago, have a radio show on D.C.’s WOL-AM Radio, called “The Talking Feather.” The show explores the history and culture of American Indians, blacks and and indigenous peoples from around the world.

“On our show, a lot of Afro-Native people were calling in, questioning why our story was not in the National Museum of the American Indian,” the Hyattsville, Md., resident said.

Later, the couple would attend a viewing of the documentary film, "Black Indians in America: An America Story," which affirmed “this identity issue started 500 years ago,” the radio host said. “When we met Louise Thundercloud, a Native woman with African ancestry, she said our story could not stop with the documentary, and we thought how we could have the story of black Indians told in the museum.”

The Williamses would put together a concept paper with a proposal to tell the story of the rich heritage forged from the relationship between American Indians and blacks and present it to NMAI'S community affairs department in early 2005. On Nov. 10, 2009, four years of work paid off with the opening of the exhibit, "IndiVisible: African-Native American Lives in the Americas." The exhibit will run through May 2010. An opening symposium drew a standing-room-only audience.

Many in attendance felt that the story of the intersection and relationship of the two peoples was long overdue, although several books have attempted to tell the story of the historical connections between the two groups that began more than 500 years ago. The late educator Carter G. Woodson stated that it "is one of the longest unwritten chapters in the history of the United Sates."

Books like “Africans and Native Americans: The Language of Race and the Evolution of Red-Black Peoples” by Jack D. Forbes, pointed out that free Africans reached the shores of the Americas as traders and settlers long before Europeans brought African slaves to the Americas in chains. Noted scholar Dr. Ivan Sertima’s “They Came Before Columbus” argues that historical, archaeological and even botanical evidence shows proof of African contact with the New World in Pre-Columbian times.

More recent evidence depicts how the relationships become more complex with the institution of slavery and the Indian Wars that pitted black soldiers against Indian tribes. While documents show the intermarriage of blacks and American Indians, African-Native slave narratives tell the stories of slaves held captive by American Indian tribes. Other times, white settlers held both American Indians and blacks captive.

However, according to Rex Ellis, associate director for cultural affairs for the National Museum of African American History and Culture, and a co-collaborator with NMAI, “While there has been excellent scholarship on the subject, the story of African-Native people is one that has not been fully explored in a wide public forum, until this exhibition. It is a story that while painful at times, needs to be told.

“African-Native Americans are inextricably bound, and they no longer wish to hide. Whatever the consequences, they want people to know who they are.”

For some like John W. Franklin, son of noted scholar John Hope Franklin, the exhibit is important “because our stories are shared. Our children need to see the overlap.” Franklin, director of partnerships and international programs for the National Museum of African History and Culture, said his grandfather, Buck Albert Franklin, is pictured in the exhibition. “The picture was taken in 1899. He had been enslaved by Native Americans but was able to escape and serve in the Civil War.”

For 75-year-old Alfred Whitaker, a member of Virginia’s Nottoway tribe, the exhibit means, “Black Indians are no longer invisible. I grew up listening to stories from my great-grandmother who was full-blooded Creek, but I could not say in proper company that my ancestors were Native American. Virginia had a law that said that if you had one drop of black blood, then you were considered colored, effectively disenfranchising Native Americans.”

For Louise Thundercloud, the exhibit “is the beginning of a place of healing long overdue. That we have come together to give a more accurate representation is really exciting.”

Tall Oak, a 73-year-old elder from Rhode Island and an Absentee Mashentucket Pequot, commented that the exhibit shows a more balanced picture between red and black peoples than previously shown in history books.

“For so long, the history books had been sanitized. Before this exhibition came to fruition, I had dreamed of telling the impact of slavery on people. Little Rhode Island was the tail that wagged the dog in the English Colonies when it came to slavery in the U.S. “

A history buff, Tall Oak captivated an attentive audience during a session with his own Afro-Native version of the song ‘Yankee Doodle Dandy” and shared some little-known historical facts.

“The Desire, the first slave ship built in the U.S., was built in Marblehead, Massachusetts,” Tall Oak said. “A year later, there was the Pequot Massacre, and all of the Pequot that were not massacred were sent as slaves to Bermuda. In 2002, we connected with the offspring of those sent to Bermuda, and they look just like us.”

Thunder Williams, who with his wife is part of a curatorial team that includes Robert Keith Collins, Angela Gonzales, Judy Kertesz and Gabrielle Tayac, said he hopes the new Smithsonian exhibit opens the door on a larger scale for reconciliation between Afro-Native people through open dialogue “and for the bigger task of helping a society that has not reconciled with one another,” Williams said.

“Colonization in the Americas inflicted psychic trauma on black and red people, resulting in a loss of identity and a distorted reality. We need a reconciliation with history, ourselves and with others,” said Gamble-Williams.” Let’s get over the fear of Africa and the fear of being identified as having African blood.”

Co-sponsored by local chapters of the Links, the exhibit will travel on exhibition through 2012. The Williamses hope the exhibition will reach numerous groups so that open discussions can be addressed around sensitive issues such as full blood versus mixed blood, and the social and political implications around identity issues.

Thunder Williams says, " 'IndiVisible: African-Native American Lives in the Americas' will facilitate dispelling negative images and unfounded myths perpetuated by inaccurate historical accounts and unbalanced academic instruction. Understanding how one's personal history fits into the national history and correspondingly into a global history is a cornerstone of cross-cultural enlightenment."

“As a sociologist, I ask, ‘How did we come to have these different ideologies?' " Dr. Angela A. Gonzales, a member of the Hopi tribe, and a member of the curator team said. “This is a huge topic that so many of us are invested in.”

IndiVisible: African-Native American Lives in the Americas


National Museum of the American Indian: Symposium - Friday, November 13, 2009
A part of the American story has long been invisible—the story of people who share African American and Native American ancestry. Over centuries, African American and Native people came together, creating shared histories, communities, and ways of life. Often divided by prejudice, laws, or twists of history, African-Native Americans were united by a double heritage that is truly indivisible.

Held on the occasion of the groundbreaking exhibition IndiVisible: African-Native American Lives in the Americas, this symposium aims to bring visibility to African-Native American lives and initiate a healing dialogue on African-Native American experiences for people of all backgrounds. Speakers include curators and authors Robert Keith Collins (African and Choctaw descent), Penny Gamble-Williams (Chappaquiddick Wampanoag), Angela Gonzales (Hopi), Judy Kertész, Tiya Miles, and Gabrielle Tayac (Piscataway). Lonnie G. Bunch, III, director of the Smithsonians National Museum of African American History and Culture, will deliver opening remarks, and NMAI director Kevin Gover (Pawnee) moderates.

Eastern Seaboard Native Americans

Nanepashemet interviewed for Kevin Costner's "500 Nations" (1993) - Part 1


INCLUDES: Was Massasoit a practical man? Why the Wampanoags helped and engaged with Plimoth Plantation; why Plimoth's settlers were simply "lucky"; the consequences of imposing English law in New England; laws on the Sabbath and alcohol.


Nanepashemet interviewed for Kevin Costner's "500 Nations" (1993) - Part 2


INCLUDES: the causes of King Philip's War in 1675; reasons for Native victories early in the war; the fortunes of various New England groups in "praying towns" during the war; Metacomet's or "King Philip's" backgrounds and his will to negotiate.


Nanepashemet interviewed for Kevin Costner's "500 Nations" (1993) - Part 3

The California Missions: Las Misiones de California

From the San Francisco Gate, "The dark, terrible secret of California's missions," by Elias Castillo, 8 November 2004:

Mission in Santa Barbara, California

Sometime soon, the House will give final consideration to the California Mission Preservation Act, sponsored by Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., providing $10 million to help restore California's Roman Catholic Missions --those historic sites where Franciscan friars and California's Indians supposedly existed in gentle harmony.

In part, the act describes how "the knowledge and cultural influence of native California Indians made a lasting contribution to the early settlements of California and the development of the California missions." What the bill utterly omits is that locked within the missions is a terrible truth -- that they were little more than concentration camps where California's Indians were beaten, whipped, maimed, burned, tortured and virtually exterminated by the friars.

Mission in San Diego, California

"Corporal punishment is inflicted on the Indians of both sexes who neglect the exercises of piety, and many sins, which are left in Europe to the divine justice, are here punished by iron and stocks. And lastly, to complete the similtude between this and other religious communities, it must be observed, that the moment an Indian is baptised, the effect is the same as if he had pronounced a vow for life. If he escape, to reside with his relations in the independent villages, he is summoned three times to return, and if he refuse, the missionaries apply to the governor, who sends soldiers to seize him in the midst of his family, and conduct him to the mission, where he is condemned to receive a certain number of lashes, with the whip." (San Diego History)

The California Indians, as the proposal says, did have a culture, but they never got a chance to contribute it to California. The Spanish crown decreed in the 1760s that the Indians were to be rounded up, baptized into Christianity and their culture destroyed. It was the same policy that Spain had followed in eradicating the complex and advanced cultures of the Mayans, Incas and Aztecs in Latin America.

Vasali Turkanoff, a Russian captive, was a more rabid detractor of the mission system and bitterly criticized the treatment accorded Indians at the missions. He was particularly incensed by the harsh punishments inflicted upon mission runaways when captured. Typically the Fathers and a squad of soldiers went in pursuit. Turkanoff claimed that when the deserters returned:

They were all bound with rawhide ropes, and some were bleeding from wounds, and some children were tied to their mothers. The next day we saw some terrible things. Some of the runaway men were tied to sticks and beaten with straps. One chief was taken out to the open field and a young calf which had just died was skinned and the chief was sewed into the skin while it was yet warm. He was kept tied to a stake all day, but he died soon and they kept his corpse tied up. (source: San Diego History )

In 1769, that near-genocidal policy was launched, under the direction of Father Junipero Serra, with the founding of California's first mission. One scholar, Robert Archibald, has written that the missions were akin to the "forced movement of black people from Africa to the American South." With the help of Spain's soldiers, the Indians were herded to the sites of the missions. Once there, they became slaves, directed by the friars to build the missions. Once within the mission boundaries, they were forever forbidden to leave. No less an authority than the U.S. National Park Service has documented and described the hellish and tragic fate of the California Indians, especially the coastal tribes. They were not warring tribes, but instead gentle harvesters who lived in equilibrium with their land and seashore.

Mission San Carlos Borromeo in the Monterey

Their terrible fate at the hands of the Spanish and friars was described by Jean François de Galaup de la Perouse, a French explorer and sea voyager hired by the French government to report on the western coastal areas of North America. In 1786 he visited Mission San Carlos Borromeo in the Monterey area and described the severe punishments inflicted on the Indians. The friars, he determined, considered the Indians "too much a child, too much a slave, too little a man." California historians Walton Bean and James J. Rawls, described La Perouse as likening the missions to the slave plantations of Santo Domingo.

Colonial stocks

Commandants of the presidios were also asked to report on punishments used at the missions and their descriptions were at variance with Lasuén's. Uniformly they maintained that from 15 to 50 lashes were the norm although a novenary of twenty-five lashes per day for nine days was sometimes applied. Stocks, shackles and hobbles were also applied to neophytes accused of neglect of work or religious duties, overstaying leave of absence, sexual offenses, thefts and quarreling. (source: San Diego History)

Yet, the Indians did not easily accede to the cruel mission life. They rebelled several times, in one instance burning nearly all of the buildings of Mission La Purísima in Santa Ynez. Historian Robert F. Heizer attributed the flare-up to the "flogging of a La Purísima neophyte" (as the Indians were called in the missions).

In the late 1820s, Mexico rebelled against Spain and won its independence. Within a decade, it also declared that the missions had to vest half their property to the Indians while the other half went to the friars and government officials. It was the beginning of the end for the missions. By the late 19th century, the missions were in ruins, abandoned by the friars who could not continue operating them without the slave labor of the Indians, whose numbers had been decimated by hard labor, starvation and disease. It is estimated that California's Indian population was about 310,000 at the beginning of Spanish rule. At the close of the 19th century, they had been reduced to approximately 100,000.

Restoration of the missions was started at the beginning of the 20th century by well-meaning persons who either ignored the cruelties inflicted on the Indians or simply were unaware of the horrors that had occurred within them. While enough historians have accurately documented those terrible ordeals, however, their findings are not well known. Visit any of the missions and there is no mention of Indians being put in stocks, whipped or chained. Instead, the usual description is of friars and Indians living side by side in peaceful harmony and happily helping each other.

Santa Barbara Mission

Lasuén's ultimate defense of the system which he served rested upon the defective character of the natives. The Father President's refutation included a scathing indictment of the very people whom he served. "Here are aborigines whom we are teaching to be men, people of vicious and ferocious habits who know no law but force. . .They are a people without education, without government, religion or respect for authority, and they shamelessly pursue without restraint whatever their brutal appetites suggest to them. Their inclination to lewdness and theft is on a par with their love for the mountains. Such is the character of the men we are required to correct, and whose crimes we must punish." (San Diego History)

The California Missions Preservation Act is expected to be voted on soon. Besides the potential and obvious conflict of its violating the constitutional separation of church and state, there is the moral responsibility that if government funds are to be used in restoring the missions, the granting of those funds must be dependent on memorializing the suffering of California's native people in the missions.

This nation has recently opened the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C. It is a monument to the Native Americans of North, Central and South America. The existence of the museum mandates that the ordeal of California's Indians cannot continue to be largely ignored and forgotten. Too many Native Americans died within the missions, which were supposed to be monuments to God's mercy, forgiveness and benevolence.

Mission in San Jose, California

The act must require that descriptions of the enslavement of California's Indians within the missions and the horrible ordeals they endured be clearly and visible provided to all visitors. America has not buried the shameful history of slavery in its Southern states; instead, books have been written and museums opened so that all may forever know of the cruelties of that practice. Why then, should the shameful history of the missions be hidden and ignored?

Additionally, the act must also require that funds be set aside for research to be conducted on mission grounds for the purpose of determining if mass graves of Indians exist within them. While some missions have clearly marked graveyards set aside for the friars, little knowledge exists of what happened to the thousands of deceased Indians who toiled within the missions. If sites are found containing the remains of those Indians, those areas must then be clearly marked for visitors and declared hallowed ground.

Mission San Miguel Arcangel

California and the nation cannot continue to look the other way at what happened in the missions; it must confront that awful specter and unveil it as a dark chapter of the state's history. It does not matter that those vicious practices occurred during Spanish rule. The missions are now revered as beloved monuments. Their continued restoration must also bring to light the most frightful chamber of their history.

(source: San Francisco Gate)

Fur Trade USA

The UK Independent's article, "Perfect skins: How the fur trade shaped the future of the USA," by Samuel Muston, on 1 October 2010, discusses the European expansion into North America via the fur trade.

As Henry Hudson sailed up the river that was soon to bear his name, he could be excused for feeling a little vexed. It was 1609 and the English explorer had once again failed to find the Northeast Passage to China and its treasures.

What Hudson had managed to do, however, was run up a large a debt to the Dutch East India Company. If he were to make another attempt, he would first need to pay off his current backers. A prospect that looked more unlikely by the day. Little did he know it, but salvation was close at hand. While Hudson 's ship was preparing to make sail for its home port of Amsterdam , an eagle-eyed crew member spotted something moving in the nearby trees. As they waited, a group of American Indians marched into a clearing and started gesturing at the ship. They were, Hudson wrote breathlessly, swathed in the "finest fur" and were of a "civil and glad countenance".

Hudson Bay Company

How "civil" soon became apparent. In exchange for a three knives, a kettle and a few trinkets, Hudson acquired a small mountain of beaver pelt. He had discovered something just as tantalizing as the Eastern Passage: a new and rich source of animal fur.

According to the American historian Eric Jay Donlin author of Fur, Fortune and Empire, Hudson 's voyage sparked a fierce competition to lay claim to the vast uncharted continent. "Fur," writes Dolin, "was one of the most powerful forces in the development of American history."

"The trade in fur was instrumental in shaping events on the continent from the early 1600s to the late 1800s: it triggered imperial wars, exploration and the expansion of the USA itself."

Indeed, many argue that the modern US owes its very genesis to the trade. The Pilgrim Fathers, according to Dolin, had two mainstays: "The Bible and the North American Beaver."

While the minds of the Puritan settlers may have been on all things spiritual, the company sponsoring their journey had more temporal aims. They were in it for the money. When the Pilgrim Fathers left Portsmouth in September 1620, they did so with a mammoth debt of £1,800. To survive, they would quickly need to establish themselves as a New World trading hub.

Their first year was bleak. Within seven months of landing half their number lay dead and the remainder barely had the strength to tend the sick. And while their surroundings were lush and temperate, opportunities for easily acquiring a commodity to trade with passing merchants were slim.

However on 16 March 1621, their luck changed. A lone American Indian walked into their encampment. He paused for a moment, then saluted and shouted, "Welcome English."

Unsure how to proceed, the colonists fell back on the traditions of their homeland: they immediately served afternoon tea. After "puddings, biscuits" and a "piece of mallard" – all of which, they record, "he liked well" – they turned to matters of commerce. In exchange for a few trinkets their well-fed guest laid a small hairy bundle at the feet of the province's governor, William Bradford. The mallard had done the trick; it was a beaver pelt. The lenses through which they viewed their surroundings had been reground: no longer was it a foreboding wilderness, the forest – and its furry inhabitants – were now their route to survival.

In matters of the cloth the settlers were meek, but as businessmen they proved rapacious. With one eye on the Bible and another on the beaver they flourished. Within six months the colonists were sending out expeditions to source more fur from local tribesmen; within ten years they had paid off their debts; within twenty years the colony had grown to encompass Cape Cod as well as Plymouth bay.

Success came, in part, as a consequence of their Puritanism. They were sparing in the use of their natural environment and took care not to pillage it without due thought (thus prefiguring the environmental movement by several centuries). Luck also played its part – beaver pelt was a hugely valuable trading commodity at the time."It is almost incredible," wrote Reverend Francis Higginson in 1629," the great gains some of our English have had." Recording that one of his fellows had sowed 6s. 8d. of corn which he had traded with the American Indians for £327 of beaver, the prelate declared himself, "struck". Unfortunately for the colonists, it was not only economically-minded vicars who noted the potential for enrichment. Soon the French began to cast envious glances at their neighbour's lucrative trade. It was every man – or country – for themselves. As Eric J Dolin points out, the phrase on everyone's lips was, "Get the fur while you can."

In 1633 Samuel de Chaplain arrived ready to govern the city of Quebec. Louis XIII had sent him with a single aim: develop the French fur trade in the area. The "Father of New France" proved outstandingly successful. Within a century the French had pillaged Canada of so much of its fur-bearing animals that many of its traders began to look south for new areas of operation. Their favoured area was fur-rich Ohio

Unfortunately for Pax Americana, George II was of a similar mind. In 1749 he had mandated some half million acres of Ohio to a group of prominent Virginian businessmen. If a century of peaceful coexistence on the American continent was to continue, and bloody conflict be circumvented, calm heads would need to prevail.

Calm heads, however, were in short supply. After a series of bloodless confrontations, a certain Major George Washington was sent to the area. His instructions were to secure the territory for British fur traders in as peaceable a manner as possible.

Failing to display the sagacity for which he would later be known, Washington decided that the best way to do this was to lead a pre-emptive attack on a French "raiding party" active in the area. When the skirmish was concluded, fourteen Frenchmen lay dead. It would later transpire, that "raiders" had in fact been messengers bearing a diplomatically worded message for Washington .

The deaths of those fourteen infantrymen sparked a full blown conflict between the rivals. Within five years Britain and her American-Indian Allies had driven Imperial France from the continent. For the French King it was a geopolitical disaster. His mistress, Madame de Pompadour, evinced her own views on the matter: "Alas," she commented, "Canada was so useful in providing me with furs."

American Bison

The fur trade was not all gunpowder and grapeshot, however. It also inspired great feats of endurance and exploration. "By the early 1800s the eastern US had lost much of its wildlife," says Keith Kaplan of the Fur Information Council of America, "so the 19th-century pioneers went across the Appalachians mountains search of beaver – and they found western America."

This incessant search for new territories and finer furs for the foreign and home market gave rise to a peculiarly American phenomenon: the mountain men. Between 1825 and 1840, this band of hardy fur-trappers set out across the continent with little more than their rifles and razor-sharp wits. "The mountain men were," says Kaplan, "the pathfinders of the West." The archetype of the breed was American-born Jebediah Smith. Tall, brash and with an eye on the main chance, Smith was a dynamo of a man. He crossed the continent like others cross roads.

In his short life, he mapped most of California, traversed the Mojave desert, traced the shore of the Great Salt Lake (where soon there would be the eponymous city) and skirted the Nevada basin. Although an explorer by inclination, he was first and foremost a beaver trapper. His travels were simply the offshoot of an unyielding economic necessity to find more territory and he was not alone in yielding to such imperatives.

"Men like Smith – and there were many – actually affected the geography of their country," says Professor Ann M Carlos of Colorado University. Although the mountain men's time on the national stage was short, their impact was far from trivial. The paths into the American hinterland that the men like Smith had cut were soon swamped with tides of settlers, all keen to make good on the trappers' discoveries. The great move west had begun: America was growing and the fur trade was leading the way.

The mountain men's endeavours may have been the foundations on which the modern USA was built but they are no longer held up as icons of universal admiration.

By the late nineteenth century, the beaver was no longer a common sight in American rivers. The animal that once succored a nation had been hunted to the edge of extinction. And as the beaver disappeared the hunters now turned their rifles on the buffalo and sea otter, with similarly devastating results. The bravery and fortitude of the mountain men may have expanded the nation, but it had also destroyed part of it.

When the scale of the extermination became clear, perceptions of the fur industry began to change, for the first time the urge to conserve superseded the desire to kill.

Heap of Bison Skulls circa 1870, USA

The nascent movement found its voice in Theodore Roosevelt, who was soon to become the 26th President of the US : "The extermination," he wrote, "has been a veritable tragedy of the animal world." The nation took note. A trickle of liberal-minded States enacted laws restricting the number of animals that could be killed each year, the trickle soon became a torrent. The tide of public opinion had turned irreversibly against the large scale slaughter of fur bearing animals. No longer would the old cry of, "get the fur while you can," be heard on the mountain ranges of America and no longer would the Mountain Man be the nation's symbol. The Gilded Age was over, the Age of Conservation had begun.

Fur, Fortune, and Empire: The Epic History of the Fur Trade in America by Eric Jay Donlin is published by WW Norton & Co (£22.99).

The Epic History of the Fur Trade in America