Читать книгу Lost Worlds of 1863. Relocation and Removal of American Indians in the Central Rockies and the Greater Southwest онлайн

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While the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation remains a significant document, the question remains, why was it so silent concerning the American Indian? And, more generally, what was the Indian policy of the Great Emancipator? Certainly, he must have known about some of the traditions of Indian slavery, and that the institution of slavery dehumanized Indians as well as Afro-Americans; and what about his contemporary, the Great Pathfinder and Republican Free-Soiler John C. Frémont? If his voice rang so loudly for curtailing the expansion of slavery into the western territories, why was it rumored that he held several de facto Indian slaves and peons at his Mariposa estate in California? These and other questions will be treated in this chapter, beginning with the history of Indian slavery in the United States.

Contrary to popular belief, American Indians were enslaved by each other and their European conquerors. In other words, the history of slavery in the United States includes slavery by Native Americans as well as slavery of Native Americans. The slavery practiced by indigenous groups prior to the European introduction of African slaves was a limited type of slavery that held people in servitude to work off a debt or serve a penal sentence. It is often called “de facto” slavery or “peonage.” Sometimes, as in the case of the Aztecs, slaves were used for ritual sacrifices. Slavery was often the result of “blood” revenge practices between extended families, clans, and tribes, and most of these slaves were war captives. Kinship and community overlapped with slavery, with captives (Indian and non-Indian) often being slowly integrated into the tribe. Unlike the chattel slavery of the Europeans and Americans, slaves were not simply property (commodities, credit, or assets to secure loans, capital, and investments), and slavery usually was not accompanied by sexism (although women and children were most often the victims) and racism.