So school started back and I am in an APUSH class. In the textbook the second chapter talks about Native Americans when colonizers first arrive but it does not mention them when they start talking about when Afircan Slaves were initially brought to the America's and Carribean Islands.
From the past I can recall classes talking about how the kept pushing Native Americans back towards the west and how thousands upon thousands of them died due to hunger and diseases. However I dont know where it is on the timeline.
My question is when slavery was beginning and at its peak what was being done to the Native Americans? What were their status like?
I am asking this question out of genuine curiosity because I know Native American history is not as honored in schools as it is other histories.
This question is centuries long, so please understand that it might be a long one.
I did write up a short timeline that might help.
Before 1492.
1500's (Columbian Era) — Native Slavery in the Spanish Empire, Indian Wars.
1600's (Colonial America) — limited Native Slavery in the British Empire. African Slavery slowly replaces white servitude in the South, Indian Wars.
1700's (Colonial/Early America) — Indian Wars, such as the French and Indian War (1750's). The Revolutionary War (1776) and the Constitution (1789) mark the beginning of the United States. Upper-class colonists build their wealth upon property in two forms, African slavery and land from Indian conquest. Slavery is essential to the Southern plantation class, but not the Northern business class or small farmers. It is phased out in the Northern states after the Revolution.
1800's (Early/Industrial America) — Slavery is now a firmly Southern institution, with New York being the last to abolish it in the 1820's. Still, most early presidents belonged to the plantation class. George Washington: from Virginia, owns several hundred slaves, wins the Northwest Indian War while president. Thomas Jefferson: from Virginia, owns several hundred slaves, fuels expansionism with the Louisiana Purchase. James Madison: from Virginia, owns 100 slaves, fights the War of 1812 against the British and the Indians. Here, future presidents Andrew Jackson and William Henry Harrison distinguish themselves battling Indians. Under James Monroe, Andrew Jackson invades Florida...etc. Later, you would see Northern presidents who were also sympathetic to slavery, called "doughfaces."
African slavery and Indian conquest are closely related.
The same year Washington became president, you saw the invention of the cotton gin. Now 1 person could clean by hand what used to take 10 people an entire month. Since cotton production was now 100 times more productive, it spread rapidly, and kept doubling in size decade after decade into the 1800's. "King Cotton" fostered booming trade with Northern merchants and British factories. This sort of industrialized factory labor also started growing in the North. This was now an international system designed to maximize profit. The apologetic slaveholders of the tobacco age (Washington, Jefferson) gave way to the aggressive proslavery advocates of the cotton age, (Jackson, Calhoun, etc.)
As huge landowners with hundreds of slaves grabbed up thousands of acres, and single cash-crop production also wore out the soil, small farmers and plantation owners alike were forced West. As we pushed west, the question of slavery in the new territories led to careful compromise and the balance of free states and slave states. But towards the end of this period, California is admitted as a free state, the compromise line is thrown out, and slavery can no longer maintain constant expansion while the North is industrializing, dominating the government and the larger economy.
In 1860, Abraham Lincoln is elected, and the Civil War brings about the end of slavery. While the plantation class is destroyed, and the business class becomes dominant. Lincoln is also rather brutal towards Natives.
In the late 1800's, you see the last Indian Wars, factory and sweatshop labor, and the rise of the segregated South.
1900's, Industrial America gives way to Modern America after the end of WW2 (1945) and segregation ends during the Civil Rights Era (1960's).