Firstly, I want to say I'm sure this is a touchy subject, and I'm trying to phrase it as delicately as possible. Please forgive and correct me if I say anything super ignorant.
That being said... Clearly Europeans treated Native Americans awfully anyway, so why draw the line at slavery, especially when it seems so much overhead could be saved by not having to ship slaves from Africa? Was it a racial thing? Were Africans somehow considered to be more "fit" for slavery than Native Americans? Or were Africans easier to control since they were out of their element, whereas Native Americans knew the land since it was their home? Or something else altogether?
Thank you!
Hi there!
You're right, this is a potentially contentious subject, but I think you asked the question in a totally respectful way.
I just TAed for a "Americas from Colonization to Independence" class, and though we focused to some extent on European motives for enslaving and transporting Africans to North America, the class was much more about what happened on the ground after arrival, so I think I can answer the second part of your question better than the first bit.
Yes, there were efforts to enslave Indigenous peoples in the Americans pretty much as soon as Europeans realized there were minerals like gold and diamonds which could be extracted. However, initial attempts at enslavement of Indigenous peoples such as the Taíno who Columbus encountered in the Caribbean were disastrous - population declined sharply in only a matter of years, and so Europeans were forced to consider other sources of labour. Spanish importation of enslaved Africans began in 1501. Indigenous enslavement continued (an adapted form of labour systems in place prior to colonization) but it often wasn't lifelong, as there was also a sense among Europeans that Indigenous peoples, being closer to their home communities, would likely escape and return home anyway. So yes, there was enslavement of Indigenous peoples in the Americas, but it looked very different than the enslavement of Africans.
Some of the most compelling source material I've seen for this are Guaman Poma's drawings depicting treatment of Indigenous peoples during colonization. Poma was a Quecha Indigenous nobleman (from contemporary Peru) whose illustrated account of Spanish conquest you can check out here, but I would particularly draw your attention to this image, which shows a colonist instructing an African to whip an Indigenous man. Primary sources like these show the complicated ways that power could function within structures of slavery and colonialism.
I also really enjoyed the textbooks for the class I TAed - Egerton et al's The Atlantic World and Peabody and Grinberg's Slavery, Freedom, and the Law. If you want some further introduction to this topic, I'd suggest starting with either of these (the former if you want more narrative, and the latter if you prefer looking at primary sources).
Hope this is helpful!
Colonists didn't draw the line for Native Americans at slavery. In fact, the British colonies in North America were net slave exporters until almost the 1690's, when African slaves began to be imported in larger numbers to work growing plantations in the Carolina's. Before African slaves became prevalent in Colonial North America, the flow of indentured servants from Europe provided much of the needed labor in the colonies. The prevalence of Native Americans, and the lack of need for their labor in the colonies, provided an economic opportunity for the colonists to capture and sell Native Americans to be sold to work the plantations in the Caribbean. The thing about the Caribbean slaves is that the slaves were often worked to death, so many (or most) of the native slaves suffered the same high mortality rate of the African slaves who would subsequently replace them.
Natives were succumbing to diseases at a very quick rate and their populations were not sustainable for a long-term labor force. As you mentioned, they also knew the layout of the land could abscond quickly.
What you need to think about in this question is not what the Europeans were doing in relation to the slave trade, because they really did not have a choice in which ethnic group they were utilizing as a slave labor force. The question you should focus on is how certain African Kingdoms were controlling their own slave trade, thereby permitting Europeans the opportunity to participate in the African Slave Trade. If you really start to look at Atlantic World trading practices, Africa is an important element in the commercial economy of Europe because it provided a market and a commodity in black bodies.
All the ideas that you bring up about Africans being "fit", etc are reactions to the cheap labor force that Europeans are procuring from warrior African kingdoms, like the Dahomey. Those guys are the people determining price, availability, and choosing which European country to do business with. I think by flipping your question around and asking "why did Africa have such a large market for slaves?" might help you understand the use of Africans in New World plantation complexes as opposed to Natives, while also giving agency to the actual controllers of the trade.
A few sources for you: Robin Blackburn: The Making of New World Slavery John Thornton: Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World JH Elliot: Empires of the Atlantic World Stuart Schwartz: Sugar Plantations and the Formation of Brazilian Society Philip Curtain: The Rise and Fall of the Plantation Complex Jordan Winthrop: White Over Black
I hope this helps you.
I haven't seen this mentioned yet, but it came up in some of my history courses last semester:
It was VERY easy for natives to escape right back to their tribes. Not only were native tribes completely willing to aid and abet escaped slaves, but also because they were completely self-sufficient without having to rely on white European society to survive, once a slave escaped they were basically impossible to recapture.
Also natives did not have the social conditioning in place to make for good slaves. Africans pulled from Africa had their spirits broken on the slave ships. Native society did not naturally have the concept of one person owning another (whereas slavery was common between African tribes), so it was difficult to motivate native slaves into hard toil.
