INDIAN ENSLAVEMENT IN AMERICA

Andres Resendez, The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America (Boston & New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2015) (From the book jacket: "Since the time of Columbus, Indian slavery was illegal in much of the American continent. Yet . . . it was practiced for centuries as an open secret. There was no abolitionist movement to protect the tens of thousands of Natives who were kidnapped and enslaved by the conquistadors, then forced to descend into the 'mouth of hell' of eighteenth-century sliver mines or, later, made to serve as domestics for Mormon settlers and rich Anglos." "Resendez builds the incisive case that it was mass slavery--more than epidemics--that decimated Indian populations across North America. New evidence . . . sheds light too on Indian enslavement of other Indians--as what started as a European business passed into the hands of indigenous operators and spread like wildfire across a vast tracts of the American Southwest." "The Other Slavery reveal nothing less than a key missing piece of American history. For over two centuries we have fought over, abolished, and tried to come to grips with African American slavery. It is time for the West to confront an entirely separate, equally devastating enslavement we have long failed to truly see.").