I answered a similar question about a year ago, which I quote below. You might also be interested in the subsequent questions in that thread, because I dive a little deeper into captivity, identity, and kinship, both real and fictive, in the context of indigenous slavery.

Captive taking and slavery has a deep history in North America. While most modern citizens of the United States think of slavery as the race-based chattel slavery of black Africans, that peculiar form of enslavement is, in the history of captivity, really, really strange. Much more common throughout the world was a system of raiding and counter raiding, often specifically for the purpose of taking captives, usually women and children, to be introduced into the new society. We have abundant evidence of these raids in the early historic period in the Northeast, as well as archaeological and oral history evidence of precontact warfare. Around 1300 CE we see an increase in palisaded villages, human remains with evidence of trauma and ritual torture, and female-heavy sex ratios in cemeteries indicating the taking of captives (Rushforth). In the Iroquois language the words for slave and dog share the same root of “to have as a slave or pet”, and some of the first gifts given to new European arrivals was an offer of captives as a sign of friendship (Cameron). The patterns established prior to contact would continue, especially as mortality due to disease, displacement, and warfare began dramatically influencing population dynamics in the Northeast.

Patterson’s work details how captives undergo a social death at the time of their enslavement. They lose their previous identity, and are reborn into the society of their captors. The range of experiences after joining the new community can vary greatly, from abject slave under imminent threat of death at any moment, to full participants in their new society. In most situations, the degree to which the captive works diligently and builds trust with their captors improves their treatment and station. Few were able to achieve full group membership, however, “more often, captives were to some extent liminal members of society, embraced in good times and abused, sold, or slain in bad times” (Cameron, p. 52).

Warfare for the Haudenosaunee was, to completely oversimplify, a way to replace individuals lost through death. In their worldview every loss, with the possible exception of drowning, was unnatural and grief over that death was a threat to the mental health of the entire community. Someone should either be blamed, or replace, the lost one and warfare both channeled that grief and allowed for population replacement. Like captives throughout the world, arrival in a Haudenosaunee village after a raid was a time of social death. They were vulnerable, powerless, and completely unmoored from previous patterns of relationships and kinship that provided safety in their previous life. Males generally underwent ritualistic torture, and if they survived, the abuse would forever mark them as a captive in their new home. For women and children, the gauntlet was typically much less harrowing, but survivors could still carry the scars of transition for the rest of their lives.

Hämäläinen is right that matrons of their lineages oversaw the redistribution of captives to families in mourning. Captives were taken to their new families, where they were bathed, fed, their wounds tended to, celebrated as new arrivals, and given the name of the recently deceased.

Scholars disagree about the degree to which captives were able to completely integrate into their new life. The Haudenosaunee seem to be on the extreme edge of a continuum ranging from complete adoption to abject slave. Unlike other nations that placed strict social limits on captive assimilation, male captives could rise in rank to become leaders of their adopted villages. Women could become full sisters, or even heads of the matrilineal lineage (Cameron). This rosy view is challenged by evidence of captives being sold or exchanged by Haudenosaunee traders, and that captives would continue to be given the menial and burdensome work not fit for full members of the society. Some scholars argue the degrading slave state was a probationary period for new arrivals, and those who tried the hardest to integrate into Haudenosaunee society were rewarded with more liberty and better treatment. Those who failed would be killed. Most evidence suggests the offspring of captives inherited a state closer to full social status, but Rushforth argues the status of captive outsider continued with the next generation. The vast numbers of adoptees in Haudenosaunee land increased over time, with some estimates suggest up to 2/3 of the Iroquois population were captives by the late 17th century.

Cameron Captives: How Stolen People Changed the World

Patterson Slavery and Social Death

Snow The Iroquois

Richter The Ordeal of the Longhouse: The People of the Iroquois League in the Era of European Colonization

Rushforth Bonds of Alliance: Indigenous and Atlantic Slaveries in New France