Slavery in America: Part Nine

The first slaves in America were Native Americans.

During the 17th century the enslavement of various Indian tribes was common.  Many Native slaves were exported to off-shore colonies, especially the “sugar islands” of the Caribbean.  This is due to the genocide practiced by the Spanish which had left the islands virtually empty.

It is estimated that from 1670-1715 British slave traders sold between 24,000 and 51,000 Native Americans from what is now the southern part of the United States to their colonies in the Caribbean.

In what would become California slavery was organised through Franciscan missions, theoretically entitled to ten years of Native labor, but in practice maintaining them in perpetual servitude.

Following the 1847/1848 invasion by U.S.  troops, Native Californians were enslaved in the new state from statehood in 1850 to 1867, three years after African slavery was abolished.

In the Thirteen Colonies slavery was more popular where labour intensive crops such as tobacco and then cotton was grown.  Before Africans were enslaved, the white ‘indentured servant’ was actually a slave. During the period of bondage many were worked to death, killed for attempting to escape, and often not freed when their time was up.

When African slavery became widespread, white slavery became less profitable.  One didn’t have to pay their passage, one had an easily recognisable slave population with no expiry date.

By 1860 a U.S. census revealed that nearly four million slaves were held in a total population of just over 12 million in the 15 states in which slavery was legal.

Of 8,289,782 free persons in the 15 slave states, 393,967 people (4.8%) held slaves, with the average number of slaves held by any single owner being 10. 

White settlers were not the only slave owners.

After 1800, the Cherokees started buying and using black slaves, a practice they continued after being relocated to Indian Territory in the 1830s.

The nature of slavery in Cherokee society was similar to that of white slave-owning society. The law barred intermarriage of Cherokees and blacks, whether slave or free. Cherokee who aided slaves were punished with one hundred lashes on the back.

In Cherokee society, blacks were barred from holding office, bearing arms, and owning property, and they made it illegal to teach blacks to read and write.

By contrast, the Seminoles welcomed into their nation African Americans who had escaped slavery.    

There were also slave owners who were black, or had some black ancestry.

In 1830 there were 3,775 such slaveholders in the South, with 80% of them located in Louisiana, South Carolina, Virginia, and Maryland.

There were economic differences between free blacks of the Upper South and Deep South, with the latter
fewer in number, but wealthier and typically of mixed race.

Half of the black slaveholders lived in cities rather than the countryside, with most in New Orleans and Charleston.

New Orleans had a large, relatively wealthy free black population (gens de couleur) composed of people of mixed race, who had become a third class between whites and enslaved blacks under French and
Spanish rule.

This third class was a ‘buffer’ which jealously guarded their rights and more often sided with the white man than the black.

Hence slavery was not limited to whites owning blacks.