Millions of Indigenous people lived in North America before European colonial powers invaded. Along with an insatiable desire for free labor, Europeans brought systems of slavery that significantly differed from the historical practices of enslavement among Native nations. Historian Christina Snyder explains what happened when these worlds collided. European concepts of bondage transformed the way Native nations interacted, resulted in the enslavement and death of millions and sparked widespread resistance.

Educators! Get a professional development certificate for listening to this episode—issued by Learning for Justice. Listen for the special code word, then visit learningforjustice.org/podcastpd.

And you can find a complete transcript on our website, along with resources to help you teach the hard history explored in this episode. Resources like these...

Resources and Resources

• Teaching Tolerance: Lesson, Rethinking Discovery
• Teaching Tolerance: I am the Blood of the Conqueror, I am the Blood of the Conquered
• Teaching Tolerance: Stowage on the Slave Ship Brooks, 1788
• Wikipedia: Requerimiento: The Spanish Requirement of 1513

Christina Snyder McCabe Greer Professor of History, Penn State University

• Slavery in Indian Country: The Changing Face of Captivity in Early America
• Great Crossings; Indians, Settlers, and Slaves in the Age of Jackson

References:

• Teaching Tolerance: Lesson, Precolumbian Native Peoples and Technology
• Doctrine of Discovery
• Teaching Tolerance: The Atlantic Slave Trade what too few textbooks told you
• U.S. Supreme Court, Johnson V. M'Intosh
• Wikipedia: Requerimiento: The Spanish Requirement of 1513
• Mapping the Mississippian Shatter Zone: The Colonial Indian Slave Trade and Regional Instability in the American South
• Sarah Shear, Social Studies & Multicultural Education, University of Washington-Bothell