# Why weren't Native Americans enslaved? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [February 17, 2015, 7:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-werent-native-americans-enslaved/712946 "2015-02-17T19:43:00Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Blake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a9a28c/32.png) [@Blake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blake)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2015, 6:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-werent-native-americans-enslaved/712946/21 "2015-02-18T06:41:50Z")
> [@Guinastasia](#): > > Or they had been exposed to them in the past, just as Europeans had? Smallpox, for example, wasn’t new to Africa, like it was to the Americas. No, quite clearly the resistance was related to the amount of melanin in their skin, just as Habeed said. Just like their strength relates to the melanin in their skin. Genetic resistance which has evolved due to multi-generational exposure? What sort of psuedo-scientific nonsense is that? > [@](#): > > …isn’t sickel cell anemia more common among Africans… Not \*more \*common. Sickle cell is universal in that vast race known as “African”. All black men have this resistance and all Africans are black skin.[And sickle cell is completely unheard of outside Africa.](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/24/Sickle_cell_distribution.jpg) And of course every medical graduate knows that malaria is multiple tropical diseases. And they know that it is a tropical because it occurs in well-known tropical climates as such as [Scotland, Canada and Norway](http://www.rbm.who.int/images/historicalMalariaMap.gif). So yes, the existence of sickle cell demonstrates that Black men have traits for resisting certain tropical disease, and that resistance is linked to the amount of melanin in their skin. Just as their large size and powerful muscles are linked to their skin colour. > [@](#): > > (Incidentally, syphilis was unknown to Europe until Columbus and co. brought it back to Europe.) [Maybe.](http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/995/why-did-so-many-native-americans-die-of-european-diseases-but-not-vice-versa) ---
**Author:** ![Hector\_St\_Clare](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b5ac83/32.png) [@Hector\_St\_Clare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hector_St_Clare)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2015, 6:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-werent-native-americans-enslaved/712946/22 "2015-02-18T06:49:26Z")
> [@get\_lives](#): > > I’ve heard this. If it’s true, why is it true? I’m not sure, but I believe it’s partly because in the moderately high altitude areas, the climate is cool enough to limit the populations of insect disease vectors like mosquitoes. In the _extreme_ high altitude areas in the Andes, the indiegenous people had an additional advantage: Europeans had trouble living there due to the lower oxygen (Quechua and Aymara have some physiological adaptations to the altitude, although they aren’t very _well_ adapted) so they weren’t able to colonize in as large numbers as they did at lower altitudes. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2015, 6:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-werent-native-americans-enslaved/712946/23 "2015-02-18T06:53:33Z")
even sven writes: \> It’s worth noting that Africans has plenty of civilization during this period, they \> were just systematically separated from it. Exactly, and that was the point I was trying to make. ---
**Author:** ![Hector\_St\_Clare](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b5ac83/32.png) [@Hector\_St\_Clare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hector_St_Clare)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2015, 6:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-werent-native-americans-enslaved/712946/24 "2015-02-18T06:54:09Z")
Peru’s population did undergo a massive collapse (it wasn’t till around 1965 that it exceeded its population in around 1525), but it was still less of a complete collapse then elsewhere in the Americas. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2015, 7:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-werent-native-americans-enslaved/712946/25 "2015-02-18T07:35:34Z")
> [@Guinastasia](#): > > While I agree most of this is bullshit, isn’t sickel cell anemia more common among Africans No, sickle cell is more common _amongst people in malarial areas_ and has fuck all to do with race. Zulus and Xhosa don’t carry sickle cell, for instance. Greeks do. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2015, 7:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-werent-native-americans-enslaved/712946/26 "2015-02-18T07:45:27Z")
Note that sickle cell isn’t the only haemoglobin disorder to have that rough distribution pattern - the [thalassemias](http://www.kidsnewtocanada.ca/images/Global_distribution_of_thalassemia.png) do too, and for the same[malarial-resistance](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thalassemia#Evolution) reason. ---
**Author:** ![Smeghead](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f1d935/32.png) [@Smeghead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smeghead)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2015, 12:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-werent-native-americans-enslaved/712946/27 "2015-02-18T12:34:03Z")
If I remember correctly, one of Columbus’s logs shortly after arriving in the Americas mentions how the natives appear to be quite docile and would make good slaves. ---
**Author:** ![Donnerwetter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b2d939/32.png) [@Donnerwetter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Donnerwetter)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2015, 12:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-werent-native-americans-enslaved/712946/28 "2015-02-18T12:58:18Z")
> [@Jophiel](#): > > An escaped Indian slave potentially can get back ‘home’ or towards another friendly tribe or otherwise find a support network and ability to hide. You could even invite reprisals from area tribes. IMHO as an armchair historian this makes a lot of sense. The local natives had the option of just sneaking away in the night and never to be seen again. After all, it was their home turf. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2015, 2:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-werent-native-americans-enslaved/712946/29 "2015-02-18T14:42:35Z")
Native Americans kept plenty of slaves themselves. It wasn’t the same form of slavery as practiced by the Europeans, slaves were an additional burden on people with minimal agriculture not far above the hunter gatherer state. Another factor in the use of Native American slaves by the Europeans was the opportunity for the slaves to escape and find their own people, the kidnapped African slaves had no where to run to. ---
**Author:** ![Malthus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2015, 3:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-werent-native-americans-enslaved/712946/30 "2015-02-18T15:03:51Z")
The primary problem was - where would you get enough native slaves from? Capturing them in battle was risky, and would hardly produce the numbers required. As others have noted, the population of natives in North America and the Caribbean suffered a collapse as a result of introduced diseases. There weren’t huge numbers of possible slaves to choose from. If you wanted to expand sugar, tobacco and cotton, eventually you had to import people from somewhere. In the Caribbean, use of slaves for sugar was so hellish that the slaves tended to die after only a few years of work and would not increase naturally, so a constant importation of slaves was necessary - the natives were simply not enough. There weren’t enough Irish rebels either. So importing Africans made sense. In Mesoamerica, a slightly different system developed - a sort of variant on the feudal. > **[Encomienda](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encomienda)** > > The encomienda (Spanish pronunciation: \[eŋkoˈmjenda\] (listen)) was a Spanish labour system that rewarded conquerors with the labour of conquered non-Christian peoples. The labourers, in theory, were provided with benefits by the conquerors for whom they laboured, including military protection and education. The encomienda was first established in Spain following the Christian reconquest of Moorish territories (known to Christians as the Reconquista), and it was applied on a much larger scale duri... ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2015, 3:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-werent-native-americans-enslaved/712946/31 "2015-02-18T15:47:46Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > No, sickle cell is more common _amongst people in malarial areas_ and has fuck all to do with race. > > Zulus and Xhosa don’t carry sickle cell, for instance. Greeks do. This bears repeating. For example, [Indians](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3818589/) have a high incidence of sickle cell trait - despite minimal genetic interchange with African malarial areas. ---
**Author:** ![Great\_Antibob](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e47c2d/32.png) [@Great\_Antibob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Great_Antibob)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2015, 3:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-werent-native-americans-enslaved/712946/32 "2015-02-18T15:55:02Z")
> [@Malthus](#): > > The primary problem was - where would you get enough native slaves from? That was also the issue in Africa (and another reason why **Habeed** ’s “big, strong, cotton-picking disease resistant blacks” thing is just bizarre). Many African slaves were captives or war prisoners taken during wars between African states or tribal groups. Many of the states already had a system of selling captives off as slaves and did most of the heavy lifting in acquiring slaves for Europeans to ship across the ocean. There’s no need to appeal to “just-so” stories about physical traits. There was an extant social system that provided a relatively large supply of easily obtained (for the Europeans, anyway) human labor. This system was virtually industrialized to provide huge numbers of people over the years. You didn’t have that to the same scale with Native American tribes. While some of the same thing might have happened with war captives being sold off, it wasn’t systematic or normal on anything approaching the same scale. ---
**Author:** ![Malthus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2015, 4:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-werent-native-americans-enslaved/712946/33 "2015-02-18T16:10:45Z")
> [@Great\_Antibob](#): > > That was also the issue in Africa (and another reason why **Habeed** ’s “big, strong, cotton-picking disease resistant blacks” thing is just bizarre). > > Many African slaves were captives or war prisoners taken during wars between African states or tribal groups. Many of the states already had a system of selling captives off as slaves and did most of the heavy lifting in acquiring slaves for Europeans to ship across the ocean. > > There’s no need to appeal to “just-so” stories about physical traits. There was an extant social system that provided a relatively large supply of easily obtained (for the Europeans, anyway) human labor. This system was virtually industrialized to provide huge numbers of people over the years. > > You didn’t have that to the same scale with Native American tribes. While some of the same thing might have happened with war captives being sold off, it wasn’t systematic or normal on anything approaching the same scale. Certainly - it was easier and cheaper to pay African kingdoms to do your human-hunting for you. All you had to do was sit off the coast in your slave-ships and pay on the barrel. Where the “disease resistant” thing comes in is that, as a result of epidemics, there simply wasn’t a huge supply of natives to enslave, even if you wanted to - particularly in the Caribbean (where the natives were more-or-less exterminated). At least, not in the numbers your slave-farms needed. You had to import from somewhere - Africa was the logical choice. In the early period, of course, slavery wasn’t restricted to Africans - Irish rebels would do - but again, there were limits on the supply. ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2015, 6:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-werent-native-americans-enslaved/712946/34 "2015-02-18T18:57:27Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > No, sickle cell is more common _amongst people in malarial areas_ and has fuck all to do with race. > > Zulus and Xhosa don’t carry sickle cell, for instance. Greeks do. You don’t have to bite my head off. I always thought it was more like Tay-Sachs disease which is mostly found among those with Ashkenazi Jewish. But now I know and ignorance fought. As far as smallpox goes though, it’s simply a fact – the west hadn’t been exposed to it, as those in the east had. ---
**Author:** ![Hector\_St\_Clare](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b5ac83/32.png) [@Hector\_St\_Clare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hector_St_Clare)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2015, 7:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-werent-native-americans-enslaved/712946/35 "2015-02-18T19:38:56Z")
> [@Malthus](#): > > Certainly - it was easier and cheaper to pay African kingdoms to do your human-hunting for you. All you had to do was sit off the coast in your slave-ships and pay on the barrel. > > Where the “disease resistant” thing comes in is that, as a result of epidemics, there simply wasn’t a huge supply of natives to enslave, even if you wanted to - particularly in the Caribbean (where the natives were more-or-less exterminated). At least, not in the numbers your slave-farms needed. You had to import from somewhere - Africa was the logical choice. > > In the early period, of course, slavery wasn’t restricted to Africans - Irish rebels would do - but again, there were limits on the supply. Much later, after the abolition of slavery in the 19th century, the Brits and Dutch hired indentured labourers from India and Java respectively to work on some of their Caribbean colonies. ---
**Author:** ![Donnerwetter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b2d939/32.png) [@Donnerwetter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Donnerwetter)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2015, 8:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-werent-native-americans-enslaved/712946/36 "2015-02-18T20:08:48Z")
> [@Hector\_St\_Clare](#): > > Much later, after the abolition of slavery in the 19th century, the Brits and Dutch **hired** **indentured labourers** from India and Java respectively to work on some of their Caribbean colonies. Isn’t that somewhat of an oxymoron? ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2015, 8:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-werent-native-americans-enslaved/712946/37 "2015-02-18T20:49:11Z")
> [@Guinastasia](#): > > I always thought it was more like Tay-Sachs disease which is mostly found among those with Ashkenazi Jewish. No, [that isn’t true either](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tay%E2%80%93Sachs_disease#Epidemiology). Cajuns and Quebecois have a similar incidence to Ashkenazi. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2015, 8:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-werent-native-americans-enslaved/712946/38 "2015-02-18T20:52:44Z")
> [@Donnerwetter](#): > > Isn’t that somewhat of an oxymoron? No, indentured laborers [were paid](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_indenture_system#The_first_indenture) (often upfront, or with sea passage). They just couldn’t quit before their contract was up. ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2015, 9:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-werent-native-americans-enslaved/712946/39 "2015-02-18T21:00:43Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > No, [that isn’t true either](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tay%E2%80%93Sachs_disease#Epidemiology). Cajuns and Quebecois have a similar incidence to Ashkenazi. Note I said _mostly_. I didn’t say exclusively. And my point was, I thought it was a condition that was seen more commonly among a certain population. (NOT that that makes that particular population inferior or whatever.) ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2015, 9:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-werent-native-americans-enslaved/712946/40 "2015-02-18T21:08:13Z")
> [@Guinastasia](#): > > Note I said _mostly_. Do you _not understand_ how “French Canadians and the Cajun community of Louisiana **have an occurrence similar to the Ashkenazi Jews** ” is a negation of that “mostly”?😕 Unless you’re arguing absolute numbers, which is … not the right way to consider disease incidence. > [@](#): > > I didn’t say exclusively. I didn’t say you did. > [@](#): > > And my point was, I thought it was a condition that was seen more commonly among a certain population. And _my_ point was, you thought wrong. Tay-Sachs isn’t an “Ashkenazi” disease, any more than sickle cell is a “Black African” one. And I didn’t think you were saying anything about inferiority. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-werent-native-americans-enslaved/712946.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-werent-native-americans-enslaved/712946.md?page=3)