Powerful Southern Native Americans

Paper Summary:

This paper examines the history of relations between the Native Americans and the settling colonialists in 1500 and onwards. It discusses why the settlers did not manage to enslave the Native Americans and how they ended up turning to Africa for their labor needs.

From the Paper:

"Perhaps the ultimate form of exploitation would be the advocation of slavery, at that time a universal practice. The custom of enslavement came from the necessity of disposing of prisoners-of-war, from the greed of traders, and from the demand for labor. Slaves, by character, were people apparently weaker than their masters either in the sense of being defeated opponents (i.e. prisoners of war), or people with no means to withstand capture and imprisonment from an oppressor. The oppressors often based their justifications for denoting a population suitable for being slaves by claiming higher moral and religious understanding, i.e. to be civilized. In America, the indigenous population certainly fitted the part to be this inferior class, with inferior technology and crucially, an 'inferior' religion. Yet the extensiveness of negro slavery in Southern America by the time of the civil war (over 4 million African-origin slaves existed) compared to the virtual non-existence of Indian slavery indicates that for whatever reason, the local southern Native American Indians were 'passed over' in the search for a suitable candidate to solve the labor shortage created by the rapidly expanding colonies. Therefore, can it be argued that the southern Native Americans were too powerful to be enslaved?"

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• Essay # 85275 : "Native Americans in Slavery"

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