Slavery as an industrial system

by H. J. Nieboer

Mackenzie, describing the Chepewyans or Athabascas, states that “they are constantly at war with the Eskimos, and kill as many of them as they can, as it is a principle with them never to make prisoners”[39]. Neither in his notes on the Chepewyans in general, nor in those on some single tribes belonging to the Chepewyan family, as the Slave and Dog-Rib Indians, Hare Indians, Beaver and Rocky-Mountain Indians, does our informant make any mention of slavery. Nor is there a word to be found about slaves in Russell’s and Bancroft’s accounts. Hearne speaks of Northern and Southern Indians, divisions of the Chepewyans. Among the Southern Indians a wife sometimes begs of her husband, who is going to war, to bring a female slave with him for her to kill. The chief Matonabbee was the son of a Northern Indian man and a Southern Indian slave[40]. Hearne does not speak of male slaves. So we may suppose that slavery proper does not exist.

On the Tacullies Bancroft remarks: “Slavery is common [[52]]with them, all who can afford it keeping slaves. They use them as beasts of burden, and treat them most inhumanely”[41].

Of the Atnas on Copper River, a division of the Kenai, Bancroft says: “Those who can afford it, keep slaves, buying them from the Koltschanes”[42].

Mrs. Allison informs us that among the Similkameem Indians of British Columbia “slaves taken in war were well treated, but always had one eye blemished to mark them”[43].

4. Algonquin group.

The authors we have consulted on the Algonquins in general[44] make no mention whatever of slaves.

Loskiel, describing the Lenape or Delawares, states that captured boys and girls were received into their families, and employed as servants; sometimes, however, they were sold to Europeans. If such prisoners behaved well, they had nothing to complain of and were not overworked. If they ran away and were recaptured, they were generally killed. But the adult male prisoners, viz. those of them who were not killed, were adopted by families, instead of those who had been killed in war or had died in some other way, and from this moment were looked upon as members of the tribe to which they now belonged[45]. As these men became members of the tribe, it is not probable that the captive children were made slaves; we may safely suppose that as long as they were young they had to perform menial work, but when adult were on a level with the members of the tribe. And as neither Loskiel, in any other passage, nor Brinton refers to slavery, slaves were very probably not to be found among the Delawares.[46].

In Le Jeune’s account of the Montagnais no mention is made of slaves. Prisoners of war were cruelly put to death[47].

The Ojibways or Chippeways, according to Keating, killed the captive warriors and old women; the marriageable women [[53]]became slaves and were very cruelly treated by the women of the victorious tribe; the children were adopted and treated fairly well[48]. Jones’s account is somewhat different. Most often all enemies were killed. Sometimes they made a few prisoners, who were adopted by those who had lost a relative; then the adopted prisoner became a relative or slave; if not adopted he was burned alive. The relatives of a murderer sometimes paid large indemnities to those of the victim; the murderer had then to work for them in order to pay off the debt; he was reduced to a kind of servitude[49]. In these accounts slaves and servitude are mentioned. The servitude of the murderer very probably was not slavery. He had to work: but it is not stated that he was made a slave, i.e. the property of an individual person. The prisoners who became “relatives or slaves” were adopted; therefore they were not slaves in the proper sense of the word. And as for the female slaves Keating speaks of, we know that a slave system without male slaves is not slavery proper. We may suppose, that these female captives became an inferior kind of wives, to whom the women of the tribe were unkind through a very natural jealousy. Kohl, in his elaborate description of the Ojibways, makes no mention of slavery. Their wars, he states, did not bring them any profit[50]. According to Carver, “all that are captivated by both parties, are either put to death, adopted, or made slaves of.” “That part of the prisoners, which are considered as slaves, are generally distributed among the chiefs, who frequently make presents of some of them to the European governors of the out-posts, or to the superintendents or commissaries of Indian affairs. I have been informed that it was the Jesuits and French missionaries that first occasioned the introduction of these unhappy captives into the settlements and who by so doing taught the Indians that they were valuable”[51]. From all the foregoing we may infer that slavery was not an indigenous institution among the Ojibways.

This inference is strengthened by what Tanner tells us of the Ottawas, an Ojibway tribe. He was adopted by an Ottawa [[54]]woman, but was not at first on a level with the other children. The first few years she made him do various kinds of manual labour: he had to cut wood, fetch water and do other kinds of work, which were not generally required from children of his age. Yet when grown-up he was on a level with the Indians into whose tribe he was admitted, and married an Indian girl[52].