[MissEdie]

I didn’t find out until three years ago our Native Americans were often targeted by Europeans for the slave trade. All I had ever been taught was that evil Southern men took blacks out of Africa to work in the fields of the plantations. I was in a third grade classroom and the teacher- an AA woman- was reading the story of Squanto, an Indian who had survived being captured and sold into slavery. To this teachers’ credit- one of her AA students told her they thought that only blacks were made slaves in the South. She told them no, Africans weren’t the only ones sold as slaves, and in some ways slavery exits to this day.

[elcid1970]

I thought Squanto was the Indian who taught the Pilgrims to fertilize their fields with fish, and later joined them in their first Thanksgiving celebration.

I’ve heard of Indians who were slaveowners but never as slaves.

[myerson]

American Indians made very poor slaves, so they were only used as slaves by other Indians. Certain Indian groups also kept Black slaves.

[hanamizu]

I didn’t find out until three years ago our Native Americans were often targeted by Europeans for the slave trade.

---

Yes they were. But they made lousy slaves. First of all, they knew the land much better than the colonists and were very likely to run away—and had people to run away to. And secondly, Indians had been cut off from the rest of humanity and its diseases for 10s of thousands of years and were thus very vulnerable to diseases like small pox and measles.

Africans had neither of these ‘faults’. Running away back to Africa was impossible. Blending in was impossible because of skin color, and the Indians were happy to enslave them if they did get away.

[Flaming Conservative]

I didn’t find out until three years ago our Native Americans were often targeted by Europeans for the slave trade.

---

Some do not realize, that many American Indian tribes held slaves of members of other tribes, as well.

[Yaelle]

Real slavery exists today and much of it is perpetrated by Muslims. There is some real slavery even here in the US by Chinese (or Chinese Americans) in west coast prostitution rings. There is Mexican or Central American real slavery also here again with female sex slavery.

And there is Slavery Lite all over here with illegals working in sweatshops and fields without benefit of safety or legal rights or protections, often made to stay permanently in debt while working long unsafe hours.