Q&A
How common was the enslavement of Native Americans?
Mike Egan
Slavery existed in the Americas long before the arrival of Europeans. In Mesoamerica, the Aztecs enslaved sacrificial victims. On the Pacific coast of North America, between 5 and 20 per cent of the population in the Haida, Chinook and Tlingit communities were enslaved. And in the present-day US north-east, the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) and other indigenous nations held war captives in a state of slavery that often ended in torture and death.
The arrival of Europeans in the Americas brought a different kind of slavery, tied to the production of commodities for markets around the
