Note [110 — Chapter I
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[110]
Enslavement of the whites by the Indians was not uncommon. Cabeza de Vaca and other survivors of Narvaez’s expedition were made slaves by the Indians among whom they wandered.
Narrative of Cabeza de Vaca
, in
Narratives of Early American History
, i, pp. 64, 69. Soto found one of these survivors, Juan Ortiz by name, who had taken on Indian customs, and nearly forgotten his native language. “
Relation of Biedma
,” in Bourne,
Narratives of the Career of De Soto
, ii, p. 3.
Strachey, The Historie of Travaile into Virginia, speaks of a story that he had heard from the Indians, concerning an Indian chief, Eyanoco by name, living somewhere to the south of Virginia, who had seven white slaves who had escaped from the massacre at Roanoke. These slaves the Indians employed in beating copper. Hakluyt Society Publication, vi, p. 26. Whether the story is wholly or partly true has never been determined. That the Indians of the locality did enslave the whites captured in war or shipwrecked off the coast is shown by the preamble of an act of Carolina in 1707. North Carolina Colonial Records, i, p. 674. In the war of 1711, the Indians spared some of the women and children captured on the plantations so that they might serve as slaves. Ibid., i, p. 182.
Captain Hendrickson, in 1616, found three persons belonging to the Dutch West India Company, who were slaves of the Mohawk and Minquae, and who were traded to him for merchandise. Hazard, Annals of Pennsylvania, p. 7.
Father Bressani was captured in 1644 by the Iroquois, and given to a woman as a slave. She sent him to Fort Orange, where he was ransomed by the Dutch and returned to France. Jesuit Relations, xxvi, p. 49. Other Jesuits were enslaved by the Iroquois. Basqueville de la Potherie, Histoire de l’Amérique Septentrionale, iv, pp. 125–163. French men, women and children had a similar fate. Jesuit Relations, xl, p. 137; xlvi, p. 207. Some of them were ransomed and freed by the Dutch. Margry, op. cit., vi, pp. 123, 125. Joutel, in 1687, feared that he would be enslaved by the Cenis, and put to work in their mines along with their Indian slaves. Margry, op. cit., iii, p. 339. After the death of La Salle, and the massacre of most of his followers in 1687, the children who were spared were taken captive by the Spanish Indians, and sent to Mexico as slaves. Margry, op. cit., iii, p. 339. Saint Denis, in 1721, certified that he had been eleven months a slave among the savages of the west Mississippi country. Robinson, Account of Discoveries in the West, etc., p. 215. As late as 1754, the Indians of Virginia had French prisoners as slaves. Virginia Historical Society Collections, iii, p. 267.
In the time of King Philip’s War, Mrs. Rowlandson of Lancaster was taken prisoner by the Indians and sold to a Narraganset chief whose slave she became. Clark, History of King Philip, p. 290. During the various colonial wars, many Englishmen were taken by the Indians as slaves and sold to the French in Canada. Massachusetts Archives, lxxiv, p. 57.