Indian Slavery in Colonial Times

Within the Present Limits of the United States

By Almon Wheeler Lauber

New York: Columbia University, 1913

OF the processes in vogue among the English for the acquisition of Indian slaves, the most productive was that of warfare. With the exception of the Pequot War and King Philip’s War in New England, the Indian wars in the English colonies were confined to the south, and there the greatest number of Indian war captives were enslaved.

After the Indian massacre of 1622 in Virginia, there was published in London, in the same year, a tract entitled “The Relation of the Barbarous Massacre in Time of Peace and League, treacherously executed by the native infidels upon the English, the Twenty-second of March, 1622, published by Authority.” The general trend of the tract is to show the good that might result to the plantation from this disaster. Number five of the possible results reads: “Because the Indians, who before were used as friends, may now most justly be compelled to servitude in mines, and the like, of whom some may be sent for the use of the Summer Islands.”

The policy advocated by the tract was carried out in succeeding Indian wars in Virginia. The accounts of a certain Thomas Smallcomb, lieutenant at Fort Royal on Pamunkey, who was probably killed in the war with Opechancanough, show him possessed at the time of his death, 1646, of several Indian slaves. It seems probable that these slaves were captives in war. After his rebellion, 1676, Bacon sold some of his Indian prisoners. The rest were disposed of by Governor Berkeley.

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