The other slavery : the uncovered story of Indian enslavement in America / Andrés Reséndez.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Caribbean debacle -- Good intentions -- The trafficker -- The pull of silver -- The Spanish campaign -- The greatest insurrection against the other slavery -- Powerful nomads -- Missions, presidios, and slaves -- Contractions and expansions -- Americans and the other slavery -- A new era of Indian bondage -- The other slavery and the other emancipation -- Epilogue.

The story of the enslavement of tens of thousands of Indians across America, from the time of the conquistadors up to the early 20th century. Since the time of Columbus, Indian slavery was illegal in much of the American continent. Yet, as Andrés Reséndez illuminates, it was practiced for centuries as an open secret. There was no abolitionist movement to protect the tens of thousands of natives who were kidnapped and enslaved by the conquistadors, then forced to descend into the "mouth of hell" of eighteenth-century silver mines or, later, made to serve as domestics for Mormon settlers and rich Anglos. Reséndez builds the case that it was mass slavery - more than epidemics - that decimated Indian populations across North America. New evidence, including testimonies of courageous priests, rapacious merchants, Indian captives, and Anglo colonists, sheds light too on Indian enslavement of other Indians - as what started as a European business passed into the hands of indigenous operators and spread like wildfire across vast tracts of the American Southwest. The Other Slavery reveals nothing less than a key missing piece of American history. For over two centuries we have fought over, abolished, and tried to come to grips with African-American slavery. It is time for the West to confront an entirely separate, equally devastating enslavement we have long failed to see truly.

English.