The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America

The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America (First Mariners Books edition 2017) by Andrés Reséndez, a Mexican historian working at the University of California Davis, won the 2017 Bancroft Prize and was a finalist for the National Book Award. In this book, Reséndez dispels the myth that only African slaves faced enslavement in the Americas. He focuses on Indigenous slaves in the Caribbean, central and northern Mexico, and the American Southwest, entrapped in a distinct brand of bondage beginning with the Spanish colonists and continuing for four centuries. Reséndez uses the term “other slavery” because this form of bondage targeted Indigenous peoples rather than Africans and involved a range of captivity and coercion forms. Through careful research, which included original Spanish and English documents, Reséndez captures the horror of Indigenous slavery and the complicity of Europeans and Americans alike in allowing this abuse to continue for centuries.

Plot Summary

The Other Slavery begins with the earliest European explorers and colonizers who started the process of taking Indigenous peoples as slaves. Christopher Columbus’s first business venture in the Caribbean was trying to make Spain the dominant slaving power of Indigenous peoples in Europe. He nearly succeeded in doing this, but the Spanish monarchs at the time opposed the enslavement of Indigenous peoples. Moreover, Columbus and his contemporaries realized that they needed human labor to extract valuable natural resources, including gold, from the Caribbean. So began one of the earliest forms of enslavement, the encomienda system, which involved the distribution of Indigenous peoples to Spanish colonists to work the mines (Chapter 1). The Spanish crown tried to abolish Indigenous slavery through the New Laws of 1542, but this started the process of Indigenous slavery becoming invisible (Chapter 2). Reséndez underscores that these laws, and the many that would follow, had good intentions, but went terribly astray. The combined effects of slavery and germs introduced by the Europeans decimated the Indigenous populations of the Americas.

Chapters 3 and 4 delve more deeply into the “why” of Indigenous slavery. Chapter 3 focuses on the real slavers, such as Luis de Carvajal y de la Cueva, who were part of the system of enslavement. Because they financially benefited from human trafficking, they used all manners of trickery and subterfuge to ensure that they could procure Indigenous peoples as slaves while not violating the Spanish crown’s laws. Chapter 4 focuses on how profits derived from silver mines in Mexico kept the slave trade alive for centuries and resulted in it spanning thousands of miles between Mexico and the US. In both chapters, human greed in its different forms drives the enslavement of Indigenous peoples, highlighting both the adaptability and staying power of the other slavery.

Spanish monarchs continued to try and eradicate slavery through the Spanish campaign, or Spanish antislavery crusades (Chapter 5). These attempts were unsuccessful due to the sheer size of the empire and the reality that the royal decrees only worked if government officials and private citizens on the ground were willing to follow them. Spanish monarchs also made amendments to these laws allowing Indigenous peoples, who had to be paid, to work the silver and gold mines. This was essentially forced labor because the Indigenous peoples could not leave, and many had to pay off debts to the mine’s owners. This practice became known as debt peonage, another form of enslavement. Indigenous peoples often revolted against the horrific treatment by Spanish and other European colonizers. The Pueblo Revolt of 1680 is one example where Indigenous people, specifically the Pueblos, successfully expelled Spanish colonists from their homeland for a time (Chapter 6).

To Reséndez, one of the more unique features of Indigenous slavery is the involvement of Indigenous peoples themselves. He demonstrates how the acquisition of horses and firearms by some Indigenous groups, such as the Comanche, enabled them to take over the slave trade from Europeans (Chapter 7). Reséndez makes clear that this participation was an attempt by some groups to reassert power within their homelands. In response to this newfound Indigenous power, white settlers pioneered new practices of enslavement, including militarizing the Mexican frontiers by establishing presidios (Chapter 8) and new forms of debt peonage (Chapter 9). Reséndez documents new attempts to free Indigenous peoples with the newly independent Mexico abolishing Indigenous slavery. Yet, the need for labor on ranches and in mines meant Indigenous slavery persisted.

With the arrival of more and more white settlers in the West, indigenous slavery became institutionalized within the US. For example, government officials in California ordered that all Indigenous peoples had to be employed, even if they had paid debts off to former employers (Chapter 10). Indigenous children were forced into apprenticeships with white owners. These owners used the children essentially as free labor. White Americans used Indigenous labor as a means of accumulating wealth and living a life of leisure. Settlers, such as the Mormons, also hid enslavement behind religious posturing. Like the Spanish colonists before them, Mormons and others claimed they were saving the souls of heathens by introducing them to Christianity and labor (Chapter 11).

One of the more revealing aspects of the other slavery is that it was nearly impossible to abolish because it had no legal basis, including in the US (Chapter 12). After the Civil War, the US Congress passed the Thirteenth Amendment. This amendment prohibited both slavery and involuntary servitude. The inclusion of the latter term should have freed all Indigenous peoples in bondage, yet the Supreme Court opted for a narrower interpretation of the Amendment that focused on chattel slavery in the South. Indigenous slavery continued throughout the 19th and 20th centuries in the US. Congress only offered Indigenous peoples in the US federal citizenship in 1924.

Reséndez’s detailed portrait of Indigenous slavery highlights a missing piece of the history of the Americas. The Indigenous experience demonstrates how the other slavery became clandestine and invisible, making it extremely difficult to truly abolish. Despite the known horrors of the other slavery, it still remains institutionalized both in the US and around the world. Reséndez underscores the need for dynamic policy interventions that match the dynamism and adaptability of the other slavery itself. Failure to do so means other groups around the world will remain in bondage.