The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America

Chapters 3 and 4 delve more deeply into the “why” of Indigenous slavery. One of the most interesting stories in this section is that of a band of English pirates, themselves slavers, who washed up on the Gulf coast in October 1568. Their preserved testimony, especially that of Miles Phillips, provides one of the best accounts of the Pánuco slave trade. Phillips was part of a group captured by Carvajal. Carvajal marched the group to Mexico City in a coffle (caravan of shackled slaves) with bound arms and leather halters around their neck. They followed the same route as countless Indigenous peoples before them. A key difference between the Englishmen and the Indigenous captives was that the latter would have been sold along the way. Phillips details the terrible treatment the Englishmen endured at the hands of a young Spaniard in charge of preventing their escape and keeping them moving:

and when our men with very feebleness and faintness were not able to go so fast as he [the young Spaniard] required them, he would take his javelin in both his hands, and strike them with the same between the neck and the shoulders so violently, that he would strike them down (86).

Once in Mexico City, Carvajal sold the Englishmen in the slave markets of Texcoco. Many of them served as servants to the Spanish gentleman and ladies. A few went to the mines, but they became overseers of the Indigenous and African slaves. While the Englishmen fared better than their Indigenous counterparts, they were still subjected to the slavers’ methods, providing a glimpse into the conditions experienced by the Indigenous peoples.

This section also highlights another key theme: the staying power of Indigenous slavery. It is highly unlikely that the Spanish king did not know about Spanish settlers claiming Indigenous captives were convicts and thus forcing them to work in the silver mines. He tolerated or overlooked the practice in order to ensure access to Mexico’s rich natural resources remained undisturbed. A host of individuals, from the king to other imperial bureaucrats to miners, soldiers, governors, and Indigenous allies, were part of the system of Indigenous peoples’ enslavement. They were vested in maintaining the stream of Indigenous slaves, which made it extremely difficult to truly stamp out slavery.

Mine owners’ extraordinary concessions to attract workers to silver mines in Mexico, including those in Parral, further supports the staying power of Indigenous slavery. While the pepena system seems like a great alternative to slavery, it never truly replaces coerced labor. Mine owners did not fully embrace the pepena system since “it essentially allowed workers to plunder the mines” (113). Free workers were also more prone to move from mine to mine in search of better working and living conditions. For these reasons, mine owners preferred to use coerced labor, which continued the clandestine enslavement of Indigenous peoples in Mexico for centuries.

Slavery practices were also adaptable and varied from place to place. While mines in other parts of the Americas relied on labor arrangements, their exact conditions differed. To support Mexico’s silver economy, mine owners relied on a mixture of free workers, Indigenous peoples who were part of the repartimientos system or debt peonage, and clear slave labor (including African and Asian individuals). In contrast, to satisfy the labor demands for the largest mine in the Andes, Spanish authorities instituted a draft labor system called mita. This system required hundreds of communities in modern-day Peru and Bolivia to send one-seventh of their adult populations to work in the mines each year.