The Hidden History of Native American Enslavement

Sometime astir 1860, Spaniards attacked a Navajo colony successful New Mexico and captured a pistillate named Ated-bah-Hohzoni, meaning “happy girl.” As she hid down a cliff with her one-year-old daughter, she watched them sprout and termination her father, her husband, and her 2 young sons. Then they came for her and her daughter. The Spaniards marched them to Taos, wherever they were sold into slavery. Father Antonio José Martínez, a well-known clergyman and civic person successful the New Mexico Territory, purchased the parent for a 100 and 50 pesos. He changed her sanction to Rosario, by which she was known for the remainder of her life. Another household successful Taos purchased her daughter, whom they called Soledad, which translates arsenic “solitude.”

More than a period later, Dora Ortiz Vásquez, a great-granddaughter of Martínez, published a booklet astir Rosario, based connected the stories that her parent and Rosario herself had told her erstwhile she was a girl. Titled “Enchanted Temples of Taos,” it gives a fawning relationship of her celebrated great-grandfather and his unwavering benevolence, including successful his attraction of Rosario. When Vásquez archetypal mentions Rosario, she calls her Martínez’s “young Navajo slave” and his “most outstanding” maidservant. We don’t larn thing astir Rosario’s beingness earlier her captivity, but, aft she arrived successful Taos, Vásquez wrote, Rosario was stubborn successful her tendency for freedom: “She went astir her duties wishing and watching for a bully accidental to escaped herself and spell backmost to her ain people.”

One day, Vásquez wrote, Martínez pondered however helium mightiness marque Rosario consciousness much comfortable. It dawned connected him, arsenic though helium had ne'er considered the anticipation before, that she “was possibly lonesome for her small girl.” He brought Rosario to the location of the household that owned Soledad. According to Vásquez, Rosario’s knees shook arsenic she stood astatine their doorstep. Martínez and Soledad’s owners talked astir the weather, the year’s crops, and sheep, earlier helium told them that the intent of his sojourn was to “reunite Rosario with her small girl.” In Vásquez’s account, Soledad’s owners suggested that they fto Soledad take wherever she would live; believing the miss was happy, they thought she would enactment with them. But, aft Soledad entered the room, she “flew to her mother’s arms and clung fast,” Vásquez wrote. Martínez arranged to acquisition Soledad for different 100 and 50 pesos.

Estevan Rael-Gálvez, the president and C.E.O. of Native Bound Unbound, a integer archive that aspires to retrieve each documented lawsuit of Indigenous slavery successful the Americas, has described “Enchanted Temples of Taos” arsenic “one of the archetypal modern accounts that uses the word ‘slave,’ and not the euphemisms” often deployed to obscure the world of Indigenous slavery. But helium has besides characterized the communicative arsenic “more romanticized than real.” According to Vásquez, a fewer years aft Father Martínez purchased Rosario, helium informed her that “she was a escaped woman.” He showed her a representation of President Abraham Lincoln and told her astir the Emancipation Proclamation. “It volition not beryllium indispensable for you to tally distant now, Rosario,” helium said successful Vásquez’s account. “If you privation to spell backmost to your ain people, you whitethorn bash so.” Rael-Gálvez, however, recovered grounds that Father Martínez petitioned the Taos County probate court, successful January, 1867, to not admit her implicit freedom. Almost 2 years aft the extremity of the Civil War, helium persuaded the tribunal to deem her a maidservant, and to sanction him arsenic her guardian. For Vásquez, the extremity of the Civil War marked a agleam enactment betwixt Rosario’s enslavement and freedom. For her and for galore different enslaved Indigenous people, though, it was much similar a modulation from 1 signifier of captivity to another.

When Father Martínez died, successful July, 1867, Rosario went to unrecorded with his lad George Romero and Romero’s wife. The pursuing year, the United States sent a national cause named William W. Griffin to New Mexico to analyse claims that slavery was inactive rampant successful the territory. Griffin submitted 4 100 and thirty-five indictments to a national expansive jury, including one, Rael-Gálvez discovered, of Romero. (None made it to trial, owing to insufficient evidence.) In the 1870 and 1880 censuses, Rosario was inactive listed arsenic a servant successful Romero’s household. In the 1885 territorial census, Soledad and her five-year-old daughter, Cleotilde, were listed arsenic servants successful the household of Romero’s brother. There is nary grounds that Rosario was ever paid for her labor. By the clip Dora Ortiz Vásquez was born, successful 1907, Rosario had her ain home, successful Ocate, connected the different broadside of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains from Taos. Though elderly, she inactive walked large distances to sojourn Dora and her mother. Dora loved Rosario “as a grandma,” she wrote, and affectionately called her “Ma-Ya-Yo.” Rosario died successful 1930. Soledad had died successful 1927. Dora wrote that it pained Rosario to person outlived her daughter.

Rosario’s communicative is 1 tiny portion of the past of Indigenous slavery. After the conquest, Spaniards brought thousands of Native Americans backmost to Spain, their faces branded with marks of the Spanish crown, their owner’s name, oregon presumption signifying their status. The Spanish owners of mines successful the Americas chained Indigenous slaves unneurotic and sent them heavy into shafts wherever they performed the astir unsafe aspects of the work. In 1542, the Spanish missionary Bartólome de las Casas completed “A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies,” which chronicled the devastation of Indigenous communities astatine the hands of Spanish conquistadors. Portions of his substance circulated astatine the Spanish tribunal and influenced King Charles V to contented the Spanish New Laws, which made the enslavement of Indians illegal, but for those who were said to beryllium cannibals oregon who were captured successful a “just war.” In documents produced earlier 1542, it was communal to find references to “esclavos indios” oregon “esclavas indias.” Afterward, those who held Indian captives developed a caller connection for describing the quality of their property. They were encomendados oregon repartidos (indentured laborers), sirvientes oregon criados (servants), oregon genízaros oregon panis (ethnic labels indicating mixed-race oregon Indigenous identities). Andrés Reséndez, a historiographer astatine the University of California, Davis, has written, “Although these forms of labour are intolerable to acceptable into a elemental definition, they mostly shared 4 traits that made them akin to enslavement: forcible removal of the victims from 1 spot to another, inability to permission the workplace, unit oregon menace of unit to compel them to work, and nominal oregon nary pay.”

The sheer assortment of presumption for enslaved Indians, each of which could connote antithetic circumstances of labour and captivity, has led to debates astir whether their assorted conditions should beryllium called slavery astatine all. Some scholars of some Indigenous and African American past are much comfy with antithetic words, specified arsenic “captives.” But, arsenic Rael-Gálvez explained to me, adjacent the 20 to 30 enslaved Africans who landed successful Virginia successful 1619 aboard a vas named the White Lion weren’t called slaves. “Because Virginia had nary instrumentality astatine the clip that defined chattel slavery, modern records defined them arsenic unfree laborers whose presumption was akin to indentured servants,” Rael-Gálvez said. Yet that has not prevented america from seeing their accomplishment successful the Americas arsenic a pivotal infinitesimal successful the past of African slavery. To Rael-Gálvez, the information that enslaved Africans called laborers oregon servants are nevertheless regarded contiguous arsenic cardinal to the past of slavery suggests that we can’t disregard Indians described by the aforesaid terms.

In galore cases, Indigenous enslavement adds caller dimensions to acquainted histories of the Americas—and to immoderate of their astir celebrated actors. Christopher Columbus sold hundreds of Indians into slavery successful Europe. Hernán Cortés owned hundreds of enslaved Indigenous people, much than anyone other successful Mexico. The Pueblo Revolt, successful 1680, during which Indians destroyed missions and churches and renounced their baptisms and Christian marriages, was a rebellion against the wide enslavement of Pueblo Indians arsenic overmuch arsenic it was a rejection of the Catholic Church. Tituba, 1 of the archetypal women accused of being a witch successful Salem, Massachusetts, was described by nineteenth-century chroniclers arsenic a Black woman. Historians today, based connected their readings of seventeenth-century documents, judge that she was an enslaved Indigenous pistillate from the Caribbean oregon South America. For Rael-Gálvez and different scholars, Indigenous slavery expands our knowing of the past of quality bondage—who its victims were, wherever it took place, what it looked like, and erstwhile it ended.

Native Bound Unbound grew retired of much than 3 decades of probe by Rael-Gálvez into the past of Indigenous slavery. As a Ph.D. pupil astatine the University of Michigan, helium created a database of thousands of Indigenous slaves held successful Colorado and New Mexico. By the clip helium graduated, successful 2002, helium had begun a occupation arsenic the authorities historiographer of New Mexico. Then, successful 2009, helium became the enforcement manager of the National Hispanic Cultural Center, successful Albuquerque. In 2022, helium began the Native Bound Unbound project, with a assistance from the Mellon Foundation that allowed him to prosecute a squad of students, professors, genealogists, and archivists to hunt for records of enslavement crossed the Americas. Researchers person since collected an abundance of materials which person revealed traces of the lives of enslaved Indians. They’ve dug profoundly successful immoderate places, but not astatine each successful others. “We person lone conscionable begun enactment that volition widen crossed generations,” Rael-Gálvez told me.

The constitution of Native Bound Unbound coincided with a roar successful assistance connected Indigenous slavery, overmuch of which has focussed connected circumstantial regions successful Latin America and the United States. An objection was Reséndez’s 2016 book, “The Other Slavery,” which took a much panoramic presumption of Indigenous slavery, from earlier the Spanish conquest up to the aboriginal twentieth century. “The Other Slavery” aimed to summation consciousness of Native American slavery successful the aforesaid mode that Native Bound Unbound aspires to do. And yet, arsenic Philip Deloria, a historiographer astatine Harvard, precocious said connected the podcast “Native America Calling,” “It’s been precise hard to deliberation astir the ways that we tin grow the communicative of Indigenous enslavement. . . . I tin database disconnected 4 oregon 5 oregon six truly bully books—academic books—on Indigenous enslavement that don’t look to person made immoderate quality successful presumption of the mode that we deliberation astir the narrative.”

Deloria explained, “When we speech astir slavery, we deliberation astir achromatic columns, plantations successful the Southeast, and African American slavery.” In fact, erstwhile African and Indigenous slavery are viewed together, it is casual to spot however intertwined they are. The researchers astatine Native Bound Unbound person uncovered instances of African and Indigenous slaves successful the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries moving broadside by broadside successful Latin American mines. Micaela Wiehe, a Native Bound Unbound researcher and Ph.D. pupil astatine Penn State, recovered matrimony records from the sixteenth century, successful and astir Mexico City, which amusement unions betwixt enslaved Indians and enslaved Africans. Boston newspapers successful the aboriginal nineteenth period announced the flight of Indigenous slaves alongside African slaves. The Native Bound Unbound probe squad learned of a Black-presenting Choctaw antheral named Spence Johnson, who was captured successful Oklahoma and taken to Shreveport, Louisiana, wherever helium was sold into slavery. He was freed aft the Civil War, and spent the remainder of his beingness successful Waco, Texas. Julio Rojas Rodríguez, a doctoral campaigner astatine El Colegio de México, who works for Native Bound Unbound and teaches past astatine the Cambridge School successful Dallas, told maine astir a Cuban enslaved trader named Francisco Martí y Torrens who led expeditions to Africa and Mexico, wherever helium purchased slaves and abducted antecedently escaped radical to enactment connected Cuba’s sweetener plantations. To Rojas Rodríguez, figures specified arsenic Martí show however African and Indigenous enslavement “are portion of the aforesaid large story—the communicative of slavery, the enslaved trade, and the replacement of slavery by caller forms of coercive labor.”

Tiya Miles, a historiographer astatine Harvard University, has written respective books that are a testament to the entanglements betwixt African and Indigenous enslavement. “Ties That Bind,” published successful 2005, was astir a Cherokee antheral named Shoeboots who owned an African pistillate named Doll. “The Dawn of Detroit,” published successful 2017, showed however assemblage Detroit relied connected assorted systems of unfree labour performed by some enslaved Africans and Indigenous captives. “Many of america are utilized to reasoning successful definite lanes,” Miles said. “We get into these ruts with our thinking, and 1 of these ruts is Black slavery. And erstwhile I accidental ‘Black slavery,’ it’s, like, click, check. We get it. We spot the fabric fields successful our minds immediately. And if I said thing similar ‘Cherokee removal,’ oregon ‘Trail of Tears,’ oregon adjacent ‘Indian Wars,’ it would astir apt relation the aforesaid way. For Native people, it’s astir removal, onshore theft, onshore loss. And for Black people, it’s astir being successful chains. That’s not adjacent an close representation of each the antithetic multifaceted ways that slavery played out, but it’s what radical see.” Miles besides told maine that, for African American historians, “the taxable of slavery is precise tender. We are descendants of enslaved people, truthful erstwhile we constitute astir the past of slavery we are its caretakers arsenic good arsenic the examiners and scholars of that history.”

In 2021, Miles participated successful a four-day virtual league convened by the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian, called “The Other Slavery: Histories of Indian Bondage from New Spain to the Southwestern United States.” On a sheet with Reséndez, she confessed that erstwhile she archetypal work his book, she felt “a small spot resistant. I had a question about, Are each these things truly slavery? And, if we’re going to telephone each of these things slavery, what does that bash to African American slavery?” She went connected to say, “I’m of the caput that it is O.K. for america to usage the word slavery flexibly. Slavery does not person to denote 1 peculiar spot oregon radical of radical oregon experience. Maybe what we request is amended language.”

Some scholars person highlighted differences betwixt African and Indigenous slavery, noting that African enslavement was based connected systems of chattel, radical hierarchies, inherited status, and forced cultivation and domestic-labor regimes, whereas Indian enslavement could beryllium based connected kinship and diplomacy. (Many Indigenous slaves were captured arsenic prisoners of warfare by some Europeans and different Indigenous groups.) There whitethorn beryllium immoderate wide information to these distinctions, but Rael-Gálvez has argued that enslaved Africans and Indians successful antithetic times and places endured each of these experiences, and that 1 strategy of slavery shouldn’t beryllium seen arsenic “more oregon less” similar slavery than another. Doug Kiel, my workfellow astatine Northwestern and a historiographer of Native America, told maine that immoderate Indigenous peoples person besides been reluctant to code past slavery wrong their ain communities. “The communicative of tribal sovereignty astir ever prevails implicit a frank investigation of violence,” helium said.

Scholars who’ve conceived of slavery arsenic an acquisition that cuts crossed groups person shaped Rael-Gálvez’s reasoning astir Native Bound Unbound. In 1982, the Harvard sociologist Orlando Patterson published his seminal work, “Slavery and Social Death,” which argued that each forms of slavery shared definite characteristics, including that enslaved radical had been stolen from their household oregon community, were incapable to find the conditions of their labor, and had, astatine best, uncertain prospects for freedom. Rael-Gálvez told maine that the Native Bound Unbound squad applies the aforesaid criteria erstwhile determining whether to statement cases arsenic instances of slavery. Beyond Patterson’s definition, Rael-Gálvez specifies that individuals indispensable beryllium classified successful documents by 1 of respective “terms of enslavement”—esclavo, criado, encomendado, oregon genízaro. Sometimes, individuals’ Indigenous individuality mightiness beryllium much ambiguous, specified arsenic erstwhile they’re described by notation to antithetic caste categories, oregon arsenic hijos de la iglesia (children of the church), oregon “padres nary conocidos” (of chartless parentage). “In those grey areas, we determination carefully,” helium said. The researchers whitethorn emblem the document, acceptable it aside, and anticipation that they volition someday observe much grounds astir the aforesaid person. In those cases, Rael-Gálvez said, “It’s not astir denying exploitation, but astir refusing to overclaim wherever the grounds is incomplete.”

One inevitable question astir Native Bound Unbound’s probe is however galore Indigenous slaves determination were. Brett Rushforth, a historiographer astatine the Huntington Library who has written astir Indigenous slavery, told maine that, successful the lawsuit of African American slavery, earlier the work of Philip D. Curtin’s seminal work, “The Atlantic Slave Trade: A Census,” successful 1969, “apologists for slavery argued that Northern abolitionists had exaggerated its standard due to the fact that they were anti-Southern.” But their statement became harder to prolong aft Curtin estimated that immoderate 10 cardinal Africans were brought to the Americas. (The fig has since been revised, to astir 12 cardinal individuals forcibly transported crossed the Atlantic, immoderate 10 and a fractional cardinal of whom survived, positive different 15 to 20 cardinal calved into slavery successful the Americas.) Rushforth argued that a number of the fig of enslaved Indians is important for the aforesaid reason: “It lets radical cognize that they request to instrumentality it seriously,” helium said.

In Rushforth’s publication “Bonds of Alliance: Indigenous and Atlantic Slaveries successful New France,” published successful 2012, helium estimated that determination were betwixt 2 cardinal and 4 cardinal Indigenous slaves successful the Americas from the late-fifteenth to the mid-nineteenth century. In “The Other Slavery,” published 2 years later, Reséndez estimated betwixt 2 and a fractional and 5 cardinal implicit astir the aforesaid period, having identified further Spanish-language sources. Both person consulted with Rael-Gálvez, who has said that it could instrumentality decades for Native Bound Unbound researchers to travel up with a unsmooth tally. Rushforth doubts a definitive fig tin ever beryllium determined, due to the fact that records person been destroyed and due to the fact that the connection and methods of Indigenous slavery were designed to support it hidden. “For now,” Rael-Gálvez told me, “the astir close mode to convey the standard is to stress that Indigenous enslavement was vast, hemispheric, and profoundly underdocumented.”

In reasoning astir the value of counting enslaved Indians, Rael-Gálvez has drawn inspiration from the New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie’s 2022 effort “We Still Can’t See American Slavery for What It Was.” In it, Bouie thinks done the meanings and ethical dilemmas of SlaveVoyages, a integer repository of information astir the vessels that brought enslaved Africans to the New World and past transported them wrong the Americas. Its African Origins database contains accusation astir about a 100 1000 individuals. Bouie acknowledges that SlaveVoyages was an important assets for historians and descendants. But helium besides argues that it raises ethical questions: “How precisely bash we subordinate to information that allows someone—anyone—to place a circumstantial enslaved person? How bash we wield these almighty tools for quantitative investigation without abstracting the quality world distant from the story?”

“Seeing Bouie’s questions felt affirming,” Rael-Gálvez told me. “It reinforced wherefore we were committed from the outset to resisting abstraction, to moving slowly, and to treating each recovered sanction and acquisition arsenic belonging to a idiosyncratic with a beingness worthy remembering.” Details of the experiences of enslaved individuals look successful authoritative documents lone rarely, and usually lone concisely and incompletely. Native Bound Unbound, the project’s website reads, tries to “respectfully hint the arc of their lives, from captivity, done enslavement, to freedom”—to reconstruct the discourse of enslavement, link individuals wrong broader kin networks, and assistance descendants larn astir their ancestors.

For Rael-Gálvez, Native Bound Unbound is profoundly personal. When I talked with him, helium described Colorado’s and New Mexico’s San Luis Valley, wherever helium was calved and raised, arsenic defined by the “persistence of Indigenous presence, memory, and belonging.” When helium was increasing up, helium recalled, his dad’s grandma often told the communicative of a relative, “a pistillate who had been captured by an force tribe. She referred to her arsenic la india panana.” Rael-Gálvez aboriginal learned that panana means Pawnee. While doing probe for his dissertation, helium discovered respective different Indigenous ancestors who had been enslaved: a pistillate called Doña Inez, who was captured successful 1590 and became 1 of the archetypal enslaved Pueblo Indians; a pistillate referred to arsenic “la apacha Margarita” and listed arsenic a subordinate of the household of Cristobal Arellano, who came to New Mexico successful 1695; Josefa Arellano, whom Rael-Gálvez believes to beryllium Margarita’s daughter, referred to successful humanities records arsenic “india” and “coyota,” classifications reserved during the Spanish assemblage play for the kid of an enslaved Indigenous woman; and Antonia, an ancestor connected his mother’s side, referred to successful the 1750 census of Santa Fe arsenic an “India” living, Rael-Gálvez told me, “in the household of a antheral who a fewer years earlier had bought a location for 50 pesos and ‘an Indian woman.’ ” In a 2025 effort astir his ancestor, Rael-Gálvez wrote, “I callback losing my enactment erstwhile I laid eyes upon the papers with Antonia’s name, a grounds created astir 3 centuries agone successful the aforesaid spot wherever I americium penning from today.”

Several of the researchers moving with him besides descended from enslaved Indians. Before gathering Rael-Gálvez, Daria Celeste Landress had learned portion researching her household past that 3 Indigenous ancestors had been listed successful humanities documents arsenic chattel, alongside furniture, houses, and trees. Aaron Taylor signed connected to enactment for Native Bound Unbound knowing thing astir the enslaved Indians successful his household tree. He had grown up with household stories astir his French ancestors. One of them had moved to New Mexico successful the precocious seventeenth period and joined a salient Hispanic pistillate named Elena Gallegos. Taylor learned that, erstwhile Gallegos died, she near an Indigenous servant named Rosa to her son, who had children with Rosa and granted her state erstwhile helium died. Taylor is simply a nonstop descendant of Rosa. “It was a perspective-altering alteration successful the household history,” Taylor told me.

Novella Nied, present successful her eighties, is Rosario’s great-great-granddaughter and Soledad’s great-granddaughter. She returned to her puerility location municipality of Taos successful 2001, aft decades moving successful the Foreign Service, due to the fact that Taos, she erstwhile explained, “is wherever my roots are.” When Nied was young, her begetter told her that her great-great-grandmother was Indian. In 1972, erstwhile she was successful her thirties, helium took the household camping successful Chaco Canyon, due to the fact that Rosario had told her descendants that that was wherever she came from. Nied received “Enchanted Temples of Taos” arsenic a Christmas acquisition successful 1975, the twelvemonth it was published. Dora had visited the household to springiness them copies of her book.

Nied recalled successful an email that she was “surprised to larn that Rosario (and Soledad) lived and worked arsenic slaves successful the Martínez household.” Dora Ortiz Vásquez besides wrote that her great-grandfather considered Rosario to beryllium a subordinate of his household and had near her a tiny portion of onshore successful his will; Nied began to wonderment if helium had “a much familial narration with Rosario.” (Native American and African American historians person demonstrated that enslaved radical could beryllium portion of a household, adjacent portion of a family, and inactive beryllium enslaved.)

Visiting the Martínez home, which is present a museum, has raised different questions. During 1 sojourn decades ago, Nied told me, she saw a representation of Rosario pinned to a wall. Vásquez had included it successful “Enchanted Temples of Taos,” and it had Rosario’s Navajo name, Ated-bah-Hohzoni, scribbled connected it. In the picture, Rosario is sitting successful beforehand of a cracked adobe wall, successful an ornate woody chair, wearing a acheronian dress, with her hands clasped implicit a acheronian shawl. Her achromatic hairsbreadth and wrinkled tegument suggest she’s successful her aboriginal years. When Nied visited a 2nd time, a fewer years later, the photograph of Rosario was nary longer there. She asked depository workers if they knew thing astir the image, oregon astir Rosario and Soledad. They did not. On a 3rd visit, a fewer years ago, she said, she spoke with the museum’s caller director, Daniel Barela, who besides told her that helium didn’t person immoderate accusation astir the photo. (Barela said to maine that helium didn’t retrieve gathering Nied, and confirmed that helium didn’t cognize thing astir Rosario oregon the photo.)