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Native Peoples before first contact
Dawn Spears, "What it Was Before," 2022.
The vast continents of "the Americas" have been home to millions of Indigenous peoples for tens of thousands of years. Native Peoples developed highly sophisticated political structures and societies, and in some regions created large urban communities with tens of thousands of people living and working together. Trade networks spanned across the entirety of the continents as Native communities developed agriculture, tools, and metal-working technologies as they shaped the landscape.
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1492 - Spanish and Portuguese colonization of the Americas
On October 12, 1492, the three ships commanded by Christopher Columbus arrived on Guanahani Island (now San Salvador in the Bahamas). The Lucayans they met were highly developed, seafaring people who built towns, grew a variety of crops, smelted copper and gold, and traded with inhabitants on other islands. Columbus was personally responsible for the enslavement of hundreds, if not thousands of Natives. The Spanish and Portuguese likely enslaved well over a million Natives in the first century of colonization.
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1500–1501 - Portuguese explorer Gaspar Corte-Real enslaves Abenakis from Maine
What is usually referred to as "exploration" often had direct negative impacts on Indigenous communities. European explorers frequently abducted Natives from the coastlines, sometimes to sell into slavery, and sometimes to pilfer information from them for European benefit. In 1500, a Portuguese explorer named Gaspar Corte-Real abducted fifty Abenakis from the coast of what is now Maine (and possibly other places) and sold them into slavery in Lisbon.
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1539–41 - Hernando de Soto entrada
The Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto invaded the southeastern region of North America as part of several entradas (Spanish for "entrances"), resulting in a destructive three-year series of conflicts with southeast Native nations, leading to enslavement of local populations and the spread of European diseases.
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1542 - Spain passes the New Laws
The New Laws passed in Spain were an attempt to curb the enslavement and genocide of Native Americans in Spanish-claimed territories in the Caribbean, Central America, and South America. While not entirely effective, they focused especially on the encomienda system, in which planters were given the lease of land and Indigenous people to work on the property, which amounted to functional slavery.
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1552 - Las Casas publishes A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies
Bartolome de las Casas was part of the first generation of conquistadors from Spain to visit the Americas. He was a slaveholder and saw firsthand the mistreatment of Native Americans. He spent thirty years exposing the abuses of Spanish colonization and advocating for the better treatment of Indigenous people. In 1552, he published A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies. Its graphic descriptions of slaughter and enslavement remain a gripping documentation of Spanish conquest.
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1576–1578 - Martin Frobisher steals at least four Inuits from Baffin Island (Canada)
Sailing for the English, Martin Frobisher explored the northern reaches of what is now Canada, abducted several Inuits, and took them to England. Three survived and were paraded around London: Kalicho (Calichough), Arnaq, and Nutaaq.
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1580 - English, French, and Dutch colonization
Attempting to repeat the "success" of the Spanish, other European nations sporadically explored Native American territories in the sixteenth century, even if they did not set up successful colonies at first. But even "exploration" was destructive, as most European explorers abducted Natives from the coastlines, sometimes to ply them for knowledge of the region and its waterways, but sometimes to be sold into slavery.
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1585–1587 - English attempt to colonize Roanoke (North Carolina)
The English first attempted to colonize territories in the Americas in the 1580s, at Roanoke, in what is now the Outer Banks of North Carolina. As Sir Richard Grenville, admiral of the fleet that carried colonists to Roanoke, soon learned, this was not vacant land ready for the taking. Early instructions for the Roanoke colonists dictated that "no Indian be forced to labor vnwillyngly" and that no colonist should "stryke or mysuse any Indian." After two main attempts, the Roanoke colony was abandoned.
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1607 - English found Jamestown and Virginia
After decades of attempts elsewhere, English colonists built their first permanent colony at Jamestown, in the heart of Tsenacommacah, which was home to 20,000 Natives confederated as the Powhatan, and led by Wahunsonacock. As with most other successful colonies, the fragile outpost of Jamestown was permitted to exist only with the permission of Wahunsonacock.
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1609 - Bermuda shipwreck
An English ship heading to Virginia ran aground on the reefs of Bermuda in the North Atlantic. Bermuda quickly became a key English colony that played an important role in the Caribbean Indigenous slave trade.
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1610–1611 - First Powhatan War (Virginia)
This brief but brutal war against the Paspahegh nation, one of the Powhatan tribes, included a brazen raid on their primary town as well as the capture and murder of the Paspahegh sonksq and her children. Records also note the enslavement of a Paspahegh man named Kempes.
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1612 - Epenow captured on Cape Cod
A Wampanoag man named Epenow was slave-raided off the coast of Cape Cod by the English but managed to return and later bring retribution against an English ship.
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1614 - Squanto captured on Cape Cod
Twenty-four Wampanoags were abducted from Cape Cod and taken to Magala, Spain, and sold into slavery. This included Tisquantum (Squanto), who found his freedom and returned to Dawnland (New England) a few years before the arrival of the Pilgrims in 1620.
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1619 - First importation of enslaved Africans to Virginia
In 1619, a ship named the White Lion carried approximately thirty enslaved Africans to Virginia after stealing them from a Portuguese ship in the Caribbean. This marked the beginning of African slavery in what later became the United States. However, Indigenous people had been enslaved in North America well before this date.
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1620 - Pilgrims found Plymouth Colony
English non-separating puritans established a colony on the site of a Patuxet village vacated by diseases (also the former home of Squanto) in Dawnland, or New England. They were aided by Squanto, who had previously been captured and enslaved by English merchants.
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1622 - Second Powhatan War (Virginia)
The confederated Powhatan protested English colonization in a surprise attack against colonial homes in Virginia. The conflict turned colonists more firmly against the Powhatan and led to Native people being enslaved by the colonists.
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1626 - English colonists murder and enslave Kalinagos on St. Kitts
Led by Thomas Warner, English and French colonists on St. Kitts banded together to murder more than one hundred Kalinagos (Carib), including Chief Tegremond.The remaining Kalingo were enslaved or banished from the island.
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1627 - Kalinago captives taken as slaves to Virginia
An English merchant named Captain Sampson transported an unknown number of Kalinagos to Virginia to sell into slavery. The Kalinagos ran away, and Virginia authorities ordered them to be hunted down and hanged. It is likely they found refuge among the Powhatan.
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1630 - Massachusetts Bay Colony founded by non-separating puritans
The Massachusetts Bay Colony inaugurated the beginning of a larger-scale puritan migration to Dawnland. New colonists quickly expanded into Native lands, which put great strains on Native communities.
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1630 - Providence Island Colony founded (Caribbean)
Puritan emigrants from England also founded a small island colony off the coast of Central America. It became the first English colony to have a majority enslaved population, which included enslaved Indigenous people.
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1636 - Barbados institutes race-based slavery
The Barbados governor and council decreed that any Africans or Native Americans taken to the English Caribbean island without a contract would be enslaved for life.
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1636–1637 - Pequot War (Connecticut)
A vicious war of extermination fought against the Pequots, the Pequot War resulted in hundreds of Pequot men, women, and children being sold into slavery in New England and the Caribbean. It also launched a large-scale takeover of Pequot land by the English.
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1641 - Body of Liberties (Massachusetts)
This early attempt to codify law in the Massachusetts colony included the 91st point, which permitted enslavement of captives taken during "just wars." This was likely an attempt to justify their enslavement of Pequots.
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1643 - Governor Kieft’s War in New Netherlands
This powerful war against the Munsee and their allies in the region surrounding the Dutch town of New Amsterdam (after 1664, New York) resulted in Dutch soldiers taking Native captives.
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1644 - Third Powhatan War (Virginia)
Protesting colonization, the Powhatan tried once again to reject the presence of English colonists. Virginians responded with mass enslavement and murder of the Powhatan and their allies.
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1662 - Virginia codifies multi-generational slavery
This statute put into law the principle of partus sequitur ventrem (the condition of the child follows the mother), ensuring that children of enslaved women of color (including Native Americans) would also be enslaved for life.
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1675–1676 - The War for New England (usually called King Philip’s War)
This powerful Indigenous uprising against the English resulted in the enslavement of more than two thousand Wampanoag, Nipmuc, and Narragansett individuals. Approximately half of those captured were enslaved locally in New England, and another thousand sent to Bermuda, Barbados, Jamaica, and even the Azores and Tangier.
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1675–1676 - Bacon’s Indian Warr (Virginia)
A local dispute between Virginia colonists and Natives soon turned into a war of extermination and enslavement led by Nathaniel Bacon, who was determined to eradicate Natives to make room for English expansion. (This war is often referred to as Bacon’s Rebellion.)
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1680 - Pueblo Revolt (New Mexico)
Decades of evangelization and coercion by Franciscan priests motivated the Pueblos to wage a temporarily successful war against Spanish colonization.
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1680–1720 - Southeast Indigenous slave trade
The largest slave trade of Indigenous peoples in the English colonies lasted for almost forty years and led to the enslavement of perhaps as many as fifty-one thousand Natives ranging from what is now North Carolina to Florida. Many were enslaved locally, but many more were shipped to other North American and Caribbean colonies.
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1700–1780 - Mosquito Shore Indigenous slave trade (Central America)
English colonists operated an Indigenous slave trade along the Mosquito Shore, a five-hundred-mile stretch of coastal territory in what is now Nicaragua and Honduras. The English partnered with the powerful Misktu nation, leading to perhaps as many as twenty thousand Natives being enslaved. Many captives were sent to the Caribbean and North America and enslaved there.
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1702–1713 - Queen Anne’s War
This prolonged war of the English and their Native allies against the Spanish and French and their Native allies led to renewed enslavement in New England and large-scale slave raiding on Spanish Catholic mission towns in Florida.
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1704 - English slave raids on Apalachee mission towns in Florida
Led by Colonel James Moore, one thousand English-allied Natives and fifty English soldiers marched from South Carolina to Spanish Florida, where they burned mission towns and took thousands of captives who were then sold as slaves.
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1711–1715 - Tuscarora War (North Carolina)
A valiant war of resistance was led by the Tuscarora against the Southeast Indigenous slave trade, which had resulted in the enslavement of many Tuscaroras and their dispersal. The war prompted those who remained to move to New York to become the sixth member of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Confederacy.
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1715–1717 - Yamasee War (Carolinas)
This pan-Indigenous uprising against English colonization and the southeast Indigenous slave trade resulted in an increase in slave raiding, but ultimately signaled the end of large-scale slave trading of Native peoples in the region.
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1729 - Natchez Revolt (Louisiana)
A series of attacks by the Natchez nation in protest of French colonization in Louisiana led to the murder and enslavement of many Natchez, with approximately 480 sold into slavery in the Caribbean.
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1741 - Jamaica Indigenous slave trade law
In response to the Mosquito Shore Indigenous slave trade and the political consequences during a time of war, Jamaican officials passed a law to try to prohibit ongoing slave trading.
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1754–1761 - Seven Years’ War
A global war between European powers, the North American segment of the Seven Years’ War was called the French and Indian War, which led to the French ceding their colonies in North America. As in most previous wars, bounties were placed on the bodies and scalps of Native Americans.
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1763 - Ottawa Chief Pontiac’s War (Ohio)
The disappointment of the French and Indian War and ongoing colonial intrusion led the Ottawa Chief Pontiac to organize a series of attacks on British outposts in what is now Ohio and Michigan.
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1772 - Robin v. Hardaway court case (Virginia)
This important freedom suit was filed by twelve descendants of an enslaved Indigenous woman named Judith. They successfully sued for their freedom in Virginia, claiming Judith was wrongfully enslaved. This marked the beginning of a noticeable increase in Native freedom suits that lasted through the Civil War.
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1774–1776 - Cherokee frontier wars
In the years between the French and Indian War and the American Revolution, colonists continually pressed westward into Native territory, prompting raids, counterraids, and captive-taking.
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1776–1783 - American Revolution
The War of American Independence was two wars in one: the first was a war of independence against the British on the East Coast, and the second was a war of expansion against Native nations on the western edge of settlement. Colonists took captives and enslaved Natives during these wars.
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1778 - 1st Rhode Island Regiment
To help raise recruits for the Continental Army, Rhode Island leaders offered freedom in exchange for service to enslaved Black and Indigenous men. Approximately 225 enlisted, 140 of whom were Black and Indigenous. This included many Narragansetts.
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1780–1830 - Indigenous freedom suits
After the American Revolution, courts in the United States increasingly favored enslaved Natives who sued for their freedom and who could trace their lineage back to a free maternal ancestor. Thousands of Native Americans found their freedom through local courts.
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1801–1970 - Federally funded boarding schools
Starting in 1801 with Spring Place Mission in Georgia, the federal government worked with religious organizations to run schools for Native American children. In most schools, half of the day was spent in the classroom and the other half was spent in labor. During this time period, more than four hundredIndigenous boarding schools were funded by the government, leading to tens of thousands of children being removed (sometimes forcibly) from their homes.
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1803 - Louisiana Purchase
A secret deal with France led to the "purchase" of the Louisiana Territory, home to millions of Native Americans. This ushered in a long-term American invasion of the mid-western and upper-midwestern regions of the continent, sparking conflicts and captive-taking.
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1807–1808 - End of the trans-Atlantic African slave trade
Both Britain and the United States officially ended the trans-Atlantic African slave trade soon after the turn of the nineteenth century. This also implicitly ended the Carribean Indigenous slave trade. However, illegal slave trading continued for decades.
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1830 - Indian Removal Act
Promoted by President Andrew Jackson and passed by Congress, this act gave legal weight to a process that had been underway for decades and would continue for another century, as thousands of people from Native nations were forcibly removed from their homelands and taken to territory west of the Mississippi. The wars surrounding removals involved stealing and captivity, especially of children.
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1834 - British emancipation
After hundreds of years of legalized slavery, Britain proclaimed a general emancipation of enslaved people in their colonies, with an imposed four years of indentured servitude in most places. Enslaved Indigenous people were freed along with enslaved Africans.
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1838 - Pierre Choteau, senior v. Marguerite (a woman of colour)
Marguerite sued for her freedom as the descendant of Marie Scipion, a Natchez woman enslaved by the French in 1731. The case made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court before Marguerite was freed.
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1848 - Mexican-American War
This war of American expansion against Mexico led to large sections of the Southwest being claimed by the United States. Hundreds of thousands of Native Americans suddenly found themselves within the boundaries of the United States and thus had to deal with aggressive American wars and removals against them.
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1849 - California gold rush
The discovery of gold in north-central California was a disaster for Native nations in the region, who were immediately overrun with American prospectors and whose labor was often commandeered to search for gold.
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1850 - California licenses the mass indenture of Native children
Even while it was being admitted into the United States as a "free" state, California authorized the mass indenture of Indigenous children. Hundreds of Native youth were funneled into long-term coercive labor situations.
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1861–1865 - Civil War
This war to end southern slavery contained another, lesser-known war in the American West against Native nations, leading to the capture, enslavement, and removal of Indigenous people from New Mexico to California.
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1862–1863 - Diné Long Walk (New Mexico)
The U.S. military waged a war against the Diné (Navajo) nation, rounding them up and forcing nearly nine thousand of them to walk four hundred miles to Bosque Redondo, a military prison in New Mexico. Hundreds died along the way, and hundreds more were slave-raided during the wars.
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1865 - Thirteenth Amendment
After the Civil War, U.S. Congress famously passed the Thirteenth Amendment, which ended legal slavery with a loophole of allowing slavery as a punishment for a crime. The amendment did not specifically mention Native Americans, and most enslavers of Indigenous people in the Southwest did not believe it applied to them, thus the enslavement of Native Americans continued for several more decades.
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1866 - Freedmen required to be given citizenship
In the Treaty of 1866, the U.S. government required the formerly slaveholding tribes in Oklahoma (who had fought with the Confederacy) to extend citizenship to the Black and mixed-race Indigenous people they held as slaves (called freedmen). This mandate was not followed completely at the time and has continued to cause controversy into the present.
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1867 - Condition of the Indian Tribes released
After the Civil War, President Johnson and Congress commissioned a large investigation into ongoing enslavement of Native Americans, especially in the Southwest. The report included a 500-page appendix with direct testimony regarding ongoing servitude and enslavement of Indigenous peoples.
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1867 - Anti-Peonage Act
In response to the Condition of the Indian Tribes report, Congress passed the Anti-Peonage Act, which specifically outlawed coerced servitude, enslavement, and peonage of Indigenous people and others anywhere in the United States. Congress found it almost impossible to enforce in the Southwest.
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1879 - Carlisle Indian Industrial School founded
Colonel Richard Henry Pratt founded what became the model off-reservation Indian boarding school in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, in an unused military barracks. His introduction of the "outing system," in which Native children were sent into white homes to work as servants, perpetuated Native servitude and became a popular model for other boarding schools.
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1880s - Detribalization
States in New England began illegally pressuring Native nations to "detribalize," which meant receiving a small per person payment in exchange for giving up large quantities of land and the right to exist as a named tribe. It was yet another means of stealing Native land and erasing Native identities. Some tribes like the Wampanoag and Narragansett retained their presence and culture and later regained recognition.
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1924 - Indian Citizenship Act
Although Black people were given citizenship after the Civil War, it was not until 1924 that the United States offered citizenship universally to Native Americans.
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1928 - The Problem of Indian Administration published
Called the Meriam Report after its primary author, Lewis Meriam, this governmental publication summarized the many problems for Native people caused by U.S. policies, including reports of the trauma created by boarding schools and their failure to provide real education.
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1930 - Senate committee report on boarding schools
This senate committee confirmed just one aspect of the many abuses of the Indian boarding schools, namely, the systematic kidnapping of Diné children in order to force them to attend boarding school.
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1934 - Indian Reorganization Act
Written partially in response to the Meriam Report, the Indian Reorganization Act reforms touched on four main areas in an attempt to deal with the complaints of Native leaders: Indian self-government; special education for Indians; Indian lands; and the Court of Indian Affairs. Native communities were given more control of Indian boarding schools.
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1947 through the late twentieth century - Mormon adoption program
Leadership of the Mormon Church began promoting the fostering and adoption of Native American children as a way of fulfilling Mormon theological ideals as well as providing what they saw as practical help to the problem of Native poverty and isolation. The program grew quickly until Native pushback vastly reduced it in the 1970s, but not before as many as sixty thousand Native children were fostered or adopted.
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1958–1967 - Indian Adoption Project
The United States Government, too, turned to adoption as a way to speed up the assimilation of Native Americans, and hundreds of state, local, and religious organizations followed suit. Thousands of additional Native children were adopted through federal, state, local, and religious programs through the 1970s.
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1968 - American Indian Movement (AIM) founded in Minneapolis
During the Civil Rights Movement, Indigenous people increasingly demanded self-determination in all areas of life, including tribal governance, education, and sovereignty. The American Indian Movement staged powerful protests in urban areas, as well as two infamous standoffs with the federal government at Alcatraz and on the Pine Ridge Reservation, bringing national attention to Native concerns.
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1978 - Indian Child Welfare Act
In response to the protests of Native leaders, the brazen adoption programs of the Mormons, federal and state governments, and religious organizations were reigned in with the passage of the Indian Child Welfare Act, which placed much more oversight in the hands of tribes and mandated preference for Indigenous children to be placed in Native American homes. Most boarding schools were closed or transferred to tribes.
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1978 - Federal Acknowledgement Process initiated
Although the federal government had "acknowledged" the existence and sovereignty of some tribes dating back to the revolutionary era, in 1978 the U.S. initiated a new process that other tribal nations could seek recognition. (States have a different and separate process of recognition.) As of 2025, there are 574 Federally recognized nations in the United States.
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2007 - United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples
As collective awareness of the injustices towards Indigenous people spread globally, the United Nations passed this important measure that intended to articulate the basic rights of all Indigenous peoples. The United States has not formally voted to adopt it, but has indicated a high level of support for the declaration.
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2016 - Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women movement
The Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women movement seeks to highlight the abduction and murder of Indigenous women and children over the long course of U.S. history, something that persists into the present. In 2016, 5,712 Native women were reported as missing, although federal and state tabulations are vastly insufficient, and the complexity of legal jurisdiction means little action is taken.
Please note that the geolocation of each individual, when available, is mapped to the location in the source in which they are mentioned. The map is for representational purposes only, and does not indicate the total number of Indigenous people enslaved or unfree in any given area. These numbers will change as the project expands. Read more about our decolonizing principles.
A sampling
Reconnection, Dawn Spears (Narragansett)
Reconnection, Dawn Spears (Narragansett)
Race in the Context of Indigenous Enslavement
Race in the Context of Indigenous Enslavement
Historical and Generational Trauma
Historical and Generational Trauma
The Importance of Stories and Storytelling
The Importance of Stories and Storytelling
The Need to Acknowledge the History of Indigenous Slavery
The Need to Acknowledge the History of Indigenous Slavery
Healing Song, Larry Spotted Crow Mann (Hassanamisco Nipmuc)
