Indian Slavery in Colonial Times Within the Present Limits of the United States

Long before American history textbooks centered on African bondage, another form of servitude shaped the colonial economy: the enslavement of Native Americans by Indigenous societies, Spanish colonists, French traders, and English settlers alike. Almon Wheeler Lauber's 1913 study recovers this buried chapter of American history, tracing how war captives became commodities, how demand for labor created robust slave markets, and how colonial powers justified ownership of Indigenous bodies through law, commerce, and violence. Drawing on scattered archival sources, Lauber examines capture methods ranging from raiding and famine sales to gambling debts and barter, detailing how slaves served as agricultural laborers, domestic servants, guides, interpreters, and concubines across Spanish missions, French trading posts, and English plantations. The book documents the striking variability of treatment: some captives were adopted into families and eventually freed, while others faced mutilation or execution. Most significantly, Lauber shows how Indian slavery gradually gave way to African bondage as colonists calculated which form of coerced labor proved more profitable and controllable. This work remains essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the full, uncomfortable scope of colonial American slavery and the forgotten Indigenous lives consumed by it.