Andrés Reséndez

The Other Slavery proved itself surprising in several respects, beginning with the interpretation of its subtitle, The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America. From this, I was expecting a history of slavery of indigenous peoples in what is now the United States. I anticipated that the slavers would be, at the earliest, colonists on the eastern U.S. seaboard, followed by whites and, perhaps, Blacks engaged in western expansion as expressed in the concept of Manifest Destiny. I show more thought the time frame would likely range from the 17th well into the 19th centuries. As for the time frame, my expectation was pretty accurate. Not so for the other expectations.

I quickly realized that “America,” in Reséndez's view is what I have seen rendered in all other histories that I have read as “the Americas.” The history pretty much begins with Columbus's taking of indigenous people from the island of Hispaniola and subsequently directs a great deal of attention to servitude in Mexico. Rather late in the book, one does come to an examination of the slave trade in the territory (and later U.S. state) of New Mexico, but the reader is first thoroughly instructed in Spanish practices in Mexico itself. Even slavery in the Philippines is mentioned before one gets to northern Mexico/New Mexico. The fact that Reséndez uses the singular “America” to refer to a broader geographical area than I expected is not a criticism inasmuch as “America” includes South, Central and North America with 35 countries and about 24 island territories. There is no objective or logical reason that the word, in the singular, should refer only to the United States, but it is commonly found that way and seeing Reséndez use it more accurately was unexpected.

Another surprise was Reséndez's use of the term “Indian.” Once the reader arrives in the chapters directed toward the northern Mexico/New Mexico slave trade, that reader does encounter the tribes familiar to most U.S. (note I did not say “American”) readers: Apache, Ute, Comanche, Pueblo, Navajo, etc. The author, however, appears to apply the term equally to all the indigenous peoples identified in the book, including those on Hispaniola and the Philippines. To use Columbus's inaccurate term for the people living in the New World at the time of European conquest strikes me as strange, particularly inasmuch as the author does not explain his word choice. I would like to know his train of thought in using it.

My third surprise encompassed the author's applications of the words “slave” and “slavery.” As Reséndez himself clearly notes, readers in the U.S. are familiar with chattel slavery, the sort that characterized ownership of Blacks largely in the southeastern quadrant of the nation and which, through its economic implications, instigated a civil war in the mid-19th century. This is slavery in which the master literally owns the slave in the same legal manner that he owns a horse, a cow, a house, or a shovel. The “other slavery” in Reséndez's focus encompasses a variety of situations in which the person designated as a slave is not entirely free to leave another person's employ or to remain independent in his or her own abode. A slave, therefore, may be one who is economically bound to remain an “employee,” especially if he or she can never earn enough money to pay off an indebtedness to a mine or ranch owner. A slave may be a member of a hostile tribe who is captured in battle. The “Indians” who left Hispaniola and returned to Europe with Columbus were, in Reséndez's view, slaves since they were not allowed to return to their homes. The author's definition of slavery is the broadest and most encompassing I have yet encountered in any history book, and some of his examples may be somewhat less than convincing as instances of “slavery,” but then again this is his point—that slavery extends far beyond chattel slavery.

Many historical facts of which I was formerly unaware (or had just forgotten!) come to light in The Other Slavery. A gold rush in Hispaniola? I never heard of that before. The wealth of Mexico thanks to its productive silver mines, and the equation in value of the peso and the dollar? Something else I didn't know or had lost in the passage of years. The Spanish monarch's edict abolishing slavery in all its forms throughout all of the Spanish empire, an edict that was ignored or “worked around” in the New World where distance from the throne rendered enforcement all but impossible? Ponce de León, the supposed Fountain of Youth seeker, being deeply involved in the Caribbean slave trade? And was this fact in your American history books in school; it wasn't in mine: “[B]y the summer of 1865, nearly all propertied New Mexicans, whether Hispanic or Anglo, held Indian slaves, primarily women and children of the Navajo nation, who were 'bought and sold by the inhabitants at a price as much as is a horse or an ox.'” (Page 294) Then there's the well known Western legendary figure of Kit Carson, who “had Navajo captives in his household” as did other notables “all the way up to Governor Henry Connelly.” (Page 287)

I brief, I found The Other Slavery a challenge to my own perceptions and understandings of what may be considered to constitute slavery. Beyond that primary lesson, I encountered numerous historical facts of which I was unaware. I do think that Reséndez has written a worthy history. Unfortunately, I also found much of his writing style less than scintillating. This book is not a “page turner” throughout. In fact, parts of it reminded me of why I was not terribly interested in history as a school student decades ago—the presentation is often tedious. Chapter 6, “The Greatest Insurrection Against the Other Slavery” is a magnificent exception to that observation. The story of the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 is absolutely fascinating in its narrative, and I wish I could say that I found the other eleven chapters as intriguing, but the excitement, the motivation to learn what happens next, is not quite in them. The book is worthy of being read, but swaths of it do require commitment and determination on the part of the reader. show less

Closer to being an academic monograph than one usually sees in history for the general reader, Resendez has a mystery of attribution he wants to tease apart. On one hand, the Spanish tended to grant credit to the first transit of the so-called "vuelta" of the Pacific Ocean, a circuit of that ocean without being forced to perform a circumnavigation, to the navigator Andres de Urdaneta in 1565, who received much acclaim. However, several months earlier in 1565, another ship from the same show more expedition to what became the Philippines arrived back in Mexico first, piloted by an Afro-Portuguese man named Lope Martin. What happened to get Martin erased from Spanish imperial history then becomes the backbone of this book, and quite a tale it is. I'm inclined to let the individual reader discover this story for themselves, as it is a good one. show less

When you hear or see the word 'slavery', what comes to mind? As Andres Resendez points out, the vast majority of us will envision African slaves, over-crowded and disease-ridden boats, and southern plantations. While that is a tragic, inexcusable part of American history, Africans were not the only people enslaved during the early, tumultuous years of America's beginnings. The Native Americans who'd roamed the country freely, who'd called the land their own for centuries before Europeans show more appeared, suddenly found themselves ripped away from their homeland and families, bought, sold, and traded. This occurred in staggering numbers, over a period of centuries.

This book is exceptionally well researched, yet it does not read like a dry textbook. Yes, it's a fairly academic read, in that it's rich in detail, but the writing is alive with texture and emotion. Resendez takes us back to an America most of us wouldn't recognize, to a time when owning a person was somehow justified as a Christian act of kindness. People disguised greed and bigotry as a necessary and righteous behavior, enabling themselves to steal Indian children and put them to work in the name of God.

Resendez takes us from the early struggles with Mexico, up through the Civil War. Most of the focus here is on the American Southwest and Mexico, then over to the American West. He highlights the country's dichotomy in fighting a Civil War to free African slaves, while continuing the enslave a disturbing number of Native Americans. In closing, Resendez briefly discusses our world history of slavery, and how it has never gone away but only evolved into something else to fit the circumstances and skirt the law.

This is a powerful, well written, disturbing, must-read book that should be in every school, a part of every history curriculum, and read by every adult. We need to acknowledge our problematic past if we have any hope of preventing a disastrous future. show less

As the saying goes, the truth is stranger than fiction. This account of an early Spanish explorer is so surreal that it is hard to believe. Even stranger still is that this story is relatively unknown in the English speaking world. Why this epic hasn't been made into a major movie, I can't say.

In summary, Cabeza de Vaca is part of a colonization expedition to Florida that goes horribly wrong. Stranded there, the conquistadores raft from Florida to Texas, but most die along the way. Cabeza show more de Vaca and 3 others manage to survive through adapting to different native cultures, first as slaves, then as shamanistic healers. After wandering from along the coast of Texas and Mexico, and then walking through the continent to the Pacific Ocean (!), they eventually meet up with Spanish slavers after 6 years. Cabeza de Vaca returned to Spain and wrote a record of his journey.

His is an amazing story on its own, but of equal intrigue are the tantalizing details of the many Native groups he and the 3 other castaways encountered. Some of the groups that Cabeza de Vaca encoutered disappeared almost immediately after contact from either disease or enslavement. His historic record is one of the only glimpses we will ever have of some of these peoples.

Resendez retells Cabeza de Vaca's tale based on his and other historic records, as well as providing some context around the larger political machinations occuring at the time. For example, Cabeza de Vaca's ill fated journey was an indirect result of Cortes' conquest of Mexico and the rivalry of conquistadores.
Fascinating story and well compiled and presented by Resendez. I would recommend to anyone who is interested in the early history and conquest of North America. show less