Slavery in Indian Country: The Changing Face of Captivity in Early America

“The American South, a familiar setting for bondage, reveals a new story,” in the hands of Indiana University assistant professor of history Snyder, who explores the Indian practice of enslaving prisoners of war in this instructive and remarkably readable book. “The South is more than the Confederacy,” she asserts; the major Native American nations (Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole) were not merely “villains or victims or foils, but leading players” in slaveholding. She reaches back to early Indian captivity practices—and how conceptions of captives and their roles in Indian communities changed with the arrival of Europeans and Africans. During the colonial period, captives were chosen on the basis of gender and age, not race, but as a nativist movement (“a collective identity as red people”) emerged in the late-18th century, Americans, black and white, became the “common enemy.” By the early 19th century—when, among other factors, black slaves became more highly valued—Africans were specifically targeted. Snyder breaks new ground in this study reveals pre-colonial Southern history and restores visibility to Native American history in the region.(Apr.)