Note 121 — Chapter II · GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION OF SLAVERY.

Of the Apaches proper Bancroft (besides his above-quoted general statement) says: “They treat their prisoners cruelly; scalping them, or burning them at the stake; yet, ruled as they are by greediness, they are always ready to exchange them for horses, blankets, beads, or other property. When hotly pursued, they murder their male prisoners, preserving only the females and children, and the captured cattle”121. This is not very suggestive of slavery; and Bancroft’s general statement about the Apache family appears rather strange. Schoolcraft tells us: “These [the chiefs] can have any number of wives they choose; but one only is the favourite. She is admitted to his confidence, and superintends his household affairs; all the other wives are slaves to her; next come his peons, or slaves, and his wife’s slaves, and the servants of his concubines; then the young men or warriors, most generally composed of the youth who have deserted other tribes on account of crimes, and have fled to the protection of the chief of this tribe.… Then come the herdsmen, and so on”122. These “slaves”, ranking even above the warriors, very probably were not slaves in the true sense of the word. According to Bourke, the Mexican captives, living among the Apaches, were treated very kindly and often rose to positions of great influence. It does not appear that these captives were kept in a slave-like state. Fremont and Emory say: “Women, when captured, are taken as wives by those who capture them, but they are treated by the Indian wives of the capturers as slaves”. It is evident that we have not to do here with slaves in the true sense. Taking into consideration all the foregoing statements, we may suppose that slavery did not exist among the Apaches123.