As a follow up to my own question. If this was a common practice, was it introduced by colonization or did it pre-exist?

#Part 1

##Slavery Among American Indians

Slavery was a practice that occurred in different places throughout the Americas to varying degrees and often was practiced differently from the idea of slavery modern society receives by the American chattel slavery of African Americans.^1 I note this because it is important to contextualize the situation in where people would have taken as slaves and how they were treated to understand the commonality and position of said slaves among Indigenous societies of North America.

Christina Snyder (2014) writes about this very topic in *Slavery in Indian Country: The Changing Face of Captivity in Early America.*^2 She details how slavery as a practice was indeed known to American Indian Tribes before European colonization, but that "captivity was not a static institution for Indians, but rather a practice that they adapted over time to meet changing needs and circumstances" (p. 4). Indigenous societies were, and are, just as dynamic and complex as the societies of the Old World, meaning the rationale for taking captives and enslaving them was built around the framework of these complexities, meeting the needs of their existing cultural and societal institutions. And once Europeans arrived, this added a whole other layer to the evolving situations that forced the institutions of slavery to adapt in order to sustain the respective societies. This means that while the institutions still functioned similarly, their scope and degree could, and often did, change dramatically.^3

Keying in on this, Synder (2014) further elaborates:

Binaries have long shaped our understanding of history, but such categories often obscure more than they illuminate. A diametrical opposition between slavery and freedom, for example, would have made little sense to Native people or other early Americans. Colonial-era bondage was diverse and contested; it was a far cry from the nineteenth-century plantation slavery that dominates the American imagination. Slavery existed across early America, and it was marked by "fluidity and ambiguity." Captivity, which both colonizers and Native people practiced, included a broad range of forms extending from temporary bondage to hereditary slavery. Through sexual relationships, adoption, hard work, military service, or escape, captives could enhance their status or even assume new identities (p. 6)

Gallay (2002) concurs with some of Synder's points as well, explaining:

Contrary to the myths of America's history that portray Indian peoples as incapable of adaptation, Native Americans readily met the challenges offered by the introduction of new technologies, peoples, and ideas. Their responses varied from one group to the next. . . (p. 2).

For the most part, slavery was not a moral issue to southern peoples of the late seventeenth century. Europeans, Africans, and Native Americans all understood enslavement as a legitimate fate for particular individuals or groups. All accepted that "others" could or should have that status, though what that status encompassed and how slaves were treated varied greatly from group to group. In the seventeenth century, slavery as an institution had minimal economic significance for American Indians ... In Native American societies, ownership of individuals was more a matter of status for the owner and a statement of debasement and "otherness" for the slave than it was a means to obtain economic rewards from unfree labor (p. 8).

##How Common Was It?

Both of the above works are primarily talking about the American South and Southeast where the Spanish and English developed colonial systems that tended toward the slave trade. This colonial style of slavery, which was predicated upon the idea of using slaves for economic purposes, was built upon the existing institutions of slavery already in existence among American Indians and, as previously noted, functioned in the same way as pre-contact slavery did for Indians. Taking captives from other groups allowed Tribes to trade for foreign goods that enhanced their existing lifestyles. It wasn't until years into the slave trade that we begin to notice societal level differences evolving from the influence of foreign motives for taking slaves, as Gallay later points to (pp. 9-10). Following this, we then begin seeing an increased amount of raids and taking captives for the slave trade because the Europeans attached economic value to captives. What this tells us is that prior to European contact and the establishment of their colonies, slavery among American Indians was generally common enough that the institution was present among a number of regional societies; it wasn't seen as a foreign practice introduced by Europeans; and the new slave trade did not immediately jeopardize Indigenous Cultures due to loss of population. However, we can also note that taking captives between Tribes was dependent upon warlike conditions and that it is a safe assumption to think the degree of taking captives was low enough to not cause societal collapses until after the slave trade had been established for a number of years, leading to increased incentive to take captives for the sake of economical value rather than integrating the slaves into other institutions meant to strength communities.

##Among the Nez Perce

I think it is also apt to provide an example. I previously outlined as a brief example how slavery worked among my people, the Nimíipuu, here. The following quote is the specific excerpt from the linked post (with some updates in the text):

I am from the Nez Perce Tribe. We are a Plateau tribe and, in the past, semi-nomadic. We had a class system in place. It consisted of three levels: upper class, [middle] class, and slave class. The tribe was split into individual "bands" that would move around and establish villages. The upper class was mainly chiefs and their families, medicine [people], and other important figures. The [middle] class could be warriors and your average citizen of a tribe. The slave class was, obviously, the slave class. While there exist this hierarchy, the other classes were not completely disadvantaged. Those of the upper class could marry anyone from another class and the lower class would enter the upper class. Those of the lower classes were not despised, but were cared for just like any other member of the tribe, including the slaves. A person from the lower class could even become a chief through a more or less democratic process and join the upper class. It was not completely wealth based and it was more fluid than one might think. Now, someone couldn't just decide one day to switch classes, but they were not treated like the poor and impoverished of today's world.

Those who filled the slave class were those either captured in war or received as part of trade. This means that slaves were part of Indigenous society in the area and existed among Tribal society. The fact that slaves could transcend their class boundaries, however, speaks to both the understanding and functionality of slavery of these times. For example, among the Nez Perce, incest was forbidden, even among distant cousins. Women of the slave class could be taken in by families of the other classes as wives by the headmen, affording them both a higher standing in the Tribe (for they were not seen as inferior) and allowing for the continuation of the Tribe without violating Protocol (Nez Perce Tribe, 1973, p. 48).