Chains of Captivity, Colonial Power, and Archival Erasure: Native American Slavery in Colonial North America

In this paper, the concept of Native American slavery in colonial North America will be explored through a combined analysis of the colonial print culture as well as the recent historiography. Utilizing digitized colonial-period newspapers in the Library of Congress and current historical and decolonial activism, the paper will delve into the structures of Indigenous enslavement as well as the modes of epistemology that allowed these practices to be common, visible and then pushed to historical discourses. The paper argues that Indigenous captivity and enslavement constituted a structurally significant role in carving out the political economies of Colonial America and its historiographical occlusion is attributable less to historical absence and lack of substance but rather colonial architecture of indigenous archives.This research illustrates the imperative of recovering Native American slavery as a central rather than marginal institution of colonial modernity.