Note 125 — Chapter II · GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION OF SLAVERY.

Miss Olive Oatman, who had been detained among the Mohaves or Mojaves, says: “They invented modes and seemed to create necessities of labour that they might gratify themselves by taxing us to the utmost, and even took unwarranted delight in whipping us on beyond our strength. And all their requests and exactions were couched in the most insulting and taunting language and manner, as it then seemed, and as they had the frankness soon to confess, to fume their hate against the race to whom we belonged. Often under the frown and lash were we compelled to labour for whole days upon an allowance amply sufficient to starve a common dandy civilized idler”125. Though such prisoners are held in a slave-like state, yet evidently the object of the masters in imposing disagreeable work upon them is not to get useful labourers, but to “fume their hate”. This account may warn us against attaching too much value to statements about slavery among similar tribes, especially where the “slaves” are whites. For such tribes as the Apaches, who are always ready to exchange their prisoners for some property, will be very apt to take prisoners, especially whites, who are likely to offer a better ransom than Indians. In such cases the prisoners are not killed; for by killing them the Indians would lose their ransom; but they may safely, as in Miss Oatman’s case, be treated as slaves by way of vengeance. But where these are the only slaves existing, a regular slave-system does not prevail. As for the Mohaves, no more particulars being given, we do not know whether they have slaves.