Why weren't North American Indians considered to be property yet to be acquired (slaves)?
score:17
The Natives were enslaved, and for quite some time, and by 1616 there were laws in every colony which legalized the enslavement of Natives and outright referred to them as slaves. The only way they managed to get a reputation for being hard to enslave was by being enslaved.
From first contact, Natives were enslaved. The enslavement of the Native Americans continued on throughout America's slavery history.
Declining population numbers, rebelliousness, treaties, and the relative availability of African slaves were likely key in the decline of Native slavery, though one could argue that their treatment was akin to slavery for far longer than that, leading into modern times.
Upvote:-3
Possibly because there were few American Indian tribes who stooped so low as to sell their own people to the whites, unlike the many African tribes, such as the Oyo, Benin, Igala, Kaabu, Asanteman, Dahomey, etc., who prospered from selling their black brothers and sisters to the Arabs and Portuguese. There were, of course, some American Indian tribes who enslaved people of other tribes, but this was usually the result of tribal warfare. These Indian war captives were primarily used for religious sacrifice, manual labor, or even for cannibalism, but rarely, if ever, sold as slaves to the whites. You might say the whites viewed the American Indian as too "savage" to be enslaved, but I would rather say they acknowledged them to be too strongly united within their Indian culture to engage in the merchandising of their own people. Hence, as another contributor stated, it was far easier for the whites to simply buy slaves from the already well-developed and reliable African market. Reference: Elikia M’bokolo, "The impact of the slave trade on Africa", and "Slave Trade, a Root of Contemporary African Crisis: African Economic Analysis 2000 "
Upvote:13
One large reason was Pope Paul III. He issued a bull in 1537 stating that American Indians had souls, and forbidding enslaving them except under some very specific circumstances. However, this wouldn't have affected the Protestant colonists, and Catholic ones weren't always very scrupulous about this either.
Another issue was that Indians acquired a reputation of being difficult to enslave. Writings from that time seem to justify this in terms of their own relative racial qualities, but I suspect the fact that they wouldn't have to swim an ocean to get back to their own culture after an escape probably had a lot to do with their attitude. Even today modern "white slavers" try to move their victims as far as possible from their homes as quickly as possible.
More post
- 📝 Could Romania have remained neutral in WWII?
- 📝 What happened first? The law that authorized the Cuban government to nationalize US firms or Eisenhower's Cuban sugar quota?
- 📝 Is the former adviser to the prime minister Dominic Cummings related by marriage to Andrew Wakefield?
- 📝 What is the source of "the three most useless things in the world are the Great Wall, Pyramids, and the Yamato"?
- 📝 Were officers allowed to resign during the American Civil War?
- 📝 Is there any information about Soshandukht or her father?
- 📝 Did the Iraqis really only use landlines during Desert Storm?
- 📝 Did the Dutch carry out trials for collaboration with the Japanese in the Dutch East Indies?
- 📝 Could prisoners be pardoned in 1832 France under the July Monarchy?
- 📝 When would one carry a sword on a shoulder with grip upwards?
- 📝 How did the early settlers of Australia settle the continent?
- 📝 Which Kings of France visited England?
- 📝 How did the Alien and Sedition acts pass?
- 📝 How was beer production affected by the war during WW2?
- 📝 What is the largest mutiny in human history?
- 📝 Why have we settled while foragers used to be healthier instead?
- 📝 What is the object moving across the ceiling in this stock footage?
- 📝 What is the oldest inscription of Yahweh found?
- 📝 Does Little Hagia sophia still contain Greek mosaics under the plaster?
- 📝 Looking for a people where the “traditional” gender roles are shifted
- 📝 For Alexander, what were the incentives of expanding to the west vs to the east?
- 📝 Why didn't Hitler have more submarines in the English channel?
- 📝 Who founded Rome?
- 📝 Why were Austria-Hungary's Slavic minorities put into multinational states?
- 📝 Is there any evidence that the US strategy at Midway was deliberate?
- 📝 How to travel from Koblenz (Germany) to Paris (France) in May 1805?
- 📝 How much did we know about heredity pre-Mendel?
- 📝 How many Romans would use an average-sized balneum every day?
- 📝 What is the real origin of the stereotype that associates fried chickens with African Americans?
- 📝 What did it mean to be a "Jacobite" at the turn of the 20th Century?
Source: stackoverflow.com
Search Posts
Related post
- 📝 Why weren't North American Indians considered to be property yet to be acquired (slaves)?
- 📝 Why were North American indigenous peoples underdeveloped?
- 📝 Why didn't North American tribes use bog iron?
- 📝 What were the native North American concepts of property rights and market exchange?
- 📝 Why did the north and south struggle to control the territories before the American Civil War?
- 📝 Why did the Confederacy think they could win the American Civil War?
- 📝 Why did North America economically prosper, and maintain stable government and South/Central America didn't?
- 📝 Why did Canada not join the American Revolution?
- 📝 Why weren't Indians converted en masse to Islam or Christianity?
- 📝 Why didn't the Nors*m*n colonize North America?
- 📝 Why does Latin America have a higher number of surviving Native Americans than North America?
- 📝 Why didn't the silk road run north of the Black Sea?
- 📝 Why are the French and Indian Wars / Seven Years' War not considered WW 1?
- 📝 Why did the Allies Invade French North Africa?
- 📝 Why was the Roman Empire considered an empire rather than a kingdom (again)?
- 📝 Why did the United States not invade North Vietnam?
- 📝 Why did Hitler not concentrate more on North Africa?
- 📝 Why did native Americans and Europeans mix in South America but not in North America?
- 📝 Why were there so few American deaths in the Bataan Death March?
- 📝 Why is Thailand considered an Axis power in WWII?
- 📝 Why did the Native American city of Cahokia die out?
- 📝 Why did civilisation/city states never take root in Australia and North America?
- 📝 Why wouldn't the South make salt from seawater during the American Civil War?
- 📝 Why is the Qing Dynasty in China considered Feudalistic?
- 📝 Why is Russian far east less populated than Chinese north east regions?
- 📝 Why do some 17th and 18th century maps depict Ottoman sanjaks north of the Danube in Wallachia?
- 📝 Why did the Union army favor a "western" route to approaching Richmond during the American Civil War
- 📝 Why didn't Turkish become an official language in former Ottoman colonies in the Middle-East and North Africa?
- 📝 Why did the dominance of maize last so long in North America?
- 📝 Why is Alexander Hamilton considered the father of modern banking?