Indian slavery in colonial times within the present limits of the United States

by Almon Wheeler Lauber

"Indian slavery in colonial times within the present limits of the United States" by Almon Wheeler Lauber is a historical study written in the early 20th century. It examines the enslavement of Native Americans by Indigenous societies and by Spanish, French, and especially English colonists, outlining how captivity, trade, and law shaped the institution and how it waned. Drawing on scattered archival sources, the work surveys capture methods, labor uses, legal status, treatment, manumission, and the shift toward African slavery. The opening of this study states its aim: to recover the largely overlooked history of Indian slavery and to emphasize English colonial practice while setting it against Indian, Spanish, and French precedents. It outlines how many Native societies practiced forms of servitude—through gambling losses, famine sales, barter, raids, and war—how captives were used (domestic work, agriculture, hunting, fishing, mining), and how treatment ranged from adoption and kinship-based manumission to mutilation and execution, with women and councils often deciding captives’ fate. It then shows Spaniards embedding enslavement in exploration and conquest, using captives as guides, porters, cooks, and concubines; notes episodic kindness amid coercion; describes a largely ineffective royal effort to end the practice; and portrays mission and presidio systems as de facto coerced labor. Finally, it sketches French practice: initially vague legality later recognized, public indifference, and reliance on war captives, kidnapping, trade by coureurs de bois (including sales to English markets), gifts from allied chiefs, and inheritance through enslaved mothers, with slaves serving as guides, interpreters, and domestics.