For over 300 years, the transatlantic slave trade forcibly transported over 10 million Africans to the Americas. Their experience of enslavement figures prominently in any history of European colonialism in the Americas. Yet, while Africans and their descendants may have constituted the majority of the western hemisphere's slaves, Native Americans suffered captivity, bondage and enslavement at the hands of Europeans well into the nineteenth century. Andrés Reséndez's The Other Slavery traces the history of Native American enslavement in the Caribbean, central Mexico and the southwest United States from Columbus's first voyage in 1492 through to the Civil War and Reconstruction. The author argues that, although Spanish monarchs and officials attempted to eradicate the enslavement of indigenous peoples early in the sixteenth century, such efforts transformed indigenous bondage into a clandestine form of slavery that always existed on the fringe of legality. His chronological and geographic focus allows his study to examine how Spanish manifestations of indigenous bondage persisted even after colonial rule gave way to Mexican independence and territorial shifts led to US control of regions dependent on such practices.
The introduction to the study contrasts the experiences and manifestations of African enslavement in the Americas to that of Native Americans. Reséndez highlights various contrasts between the two systems. Importantly, while African slavery remain legal until its formal abolition, indigenous slavery had no formal legal basis. The liminality of indigenous slavery resulted in constant shifts in its enactment, structure and social experience. Consequently, Reséndez argues that four key features define this ‘other slavery’: (i) its victims suffered removal from their traditional places of residence; (ii) once captive, indigenous slaves lacked the ability to leave; (iii) violence, both overt and structural, compelled indigenous slaves to work; (iv) victims received nominal or no pay for their labour.
The body chapters trace the development of the other slavery chronologically, with the geographic focus shifting as chapters highlight prominent manifestations of these practices. Chapters 1 and 2 examine initial attempts to enslave Native Americans in the Caribbean and subsequent royal efforts to outlaw the practice. Yet, as royal law gradually circumscribed legal indigenous enslavement, the other slavery grew in the shadows as Spaniards found ways to bend prohibitions to maximise their control of indigenous bodies and labour.
The third and fourth chapters use case studies to trace the manifestations of the other slavery in Mexico and its extension into the near north of Mexico's silver mining districts. Chapter 3 offers a case study of the frontier captain and enslaver Luis de Carvajal y de la Cueva, while Chapter 4 turns to the experience of the other slavery in the mining town of Parral. Chapter 5 revisits royal efforts to curb indigenous enslavement by examining the policies of Philip IV and his attempt to emancipate all indigenous slaves in 1679.
The remaining chapters turn to the experience of the other slavery in what is now the southwest United States. In Chapter 6, Reséndez examines the great Pueblo revolt of 1680. He argues that previous interpretations have failed to acknowledge the profound role that coerced and unfree labour played in fuelling anti-Spanish sentiment among the region's indigenous population. Although the Spanish would recolonise the region in 1692, by the seventeenth century powerful indigenous groups like the Comanche and Utes started to control a trade in indigenous slaves. Chapter 7 examines this process and argues that this indigenous-led trade began to forge commercial ties that stretched from the Plains to the Pacific. Chapter 8 turns to the role of the other slavery in Spanish presidios and missions established along the northern frontier. After Mexican independence the sites of other slavery shifted. Chapter 9 examines how in the post-independence period Apache and Comanche captive-taking increased and expanded south into Mexico's near north. At the same time, new forms of bondage developed as debt peonage and anti-vagrancy laws served to shift the legal mechanisms underpinning the other slavery.
The final three chapters turn to the other slavery after the imposition of US sovereignty in the Southwest. As American interests entered the region they adopted the mechanisms and practices that they observed among their Mexican counterparts. In Chapter 10, Reséndez offers several case studies of prominent Anglo settlers in New Mexico and California adopting and at times expanding the other slavery. Chapter 11 examines several new manifestations of the other slavery, including the practice of ransom and indenture by Mormons in Utah as well as Colonel Christopher (‘Kit’) Carson's two-year campaign against the Navajo in the 1860s that generated thousands of indigenous captives and resulted in their removal to a reservation. The final chapter traces the political debate over the abolition of indigenous slavery and the applicability of the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments to the US Constitution to indigenous captives. Not surprisingly, the liminal and varied forms of the other slavery complicated the applicability of these rights to indigenous victims.
Overall, Reséndez offers a powerful and well-researched argument for the centrality of the other slavery in constituting and shaping the long historical relationships between indigenous people and European colonisers in north America. Moreover, the history of indigenous slavery in the Southwest reveals that the shift from Spanish and Mexican sovereignty to US rule did not disrupt patterns of indigenous labour exploitation, and Reséndez's analysis of the ever-shifting shape of the other slavery illuminates how many present-day forms of slavery enact mechanisms of bondage and coercion that have existed for centuries. Masterfully written, this work provides new insights on indigenous slavery to students and scholars alike.
