The Other Slavery (69 page)

27. Ann Oldham,
Albert H. Pfeiffer: Indian Agent, Soldier and Mountain Man
(Washington, DC: published by author, 2003), 50–52; Thomas W. Dunlay,
Kit Carson and the Indians
(Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2000), 217; Blackhawk,
Violence over the Land,
208–210; McNitt,
Navajo Wars,
402–403.

28. Strictly speaking, Colonel Edward Canby made the decision to launch a new campaign against the Navajos before General Carleton replaced him. For additional background on this as well as the quote by Canby, see Dunlay,
Kit Carson and the Indians,
261–262, 316. Indian subagent Pfeiffer specifically referred to the division among the Navajos: “The rich Navajoes, who are few want peace, but all the poor who live in Chelle Tehasca & Tchacca want War and they say they want to steal all the Animals from the Mexicans as soon as they get in good condition. Tehasca is only five days easy travel from here & Tchacca from two to three days & a tolerable road.” Pfeiffer to Collins, May 15, 1859, in Oldham,
Albert H. Pfeiffer,
50–51. See, more generally, Brooks,
Captives and Cousins,
241–250 and app. A; and DeLay, “Blood Talk,” 229–236.

29. General Carleton to Colonel Edwin A. Rigg, Santa Fe, August 6, 1863, in U.S. Congress,
Condition of the Indian Tribes: Report of the Joint Special Committee, Appointed Under Joint Resolution of March 3, 1865
(Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1867), 124.

30. Carleton to Rigg, August 6, 1863, 124; Dunlay,
Kit Carson and the Indians,
chaps. 5 and 6.

31. On the number of soldiers, see General Carleton to Brigadier General Lorenzo Thomas, Santa Fe, August 6, 1863, in U.S. Congress,
Condition of the Indian Tribes,
124. On requesting a weekly report, see Carleton to Carson, Santa Fe, August 7, 1863, in ibid., 125–126. The emphasis is in the original. On campaigning through the Canyon de Chelly, see Carleton to Carson, Santa Fe, December 5, 1863, in ibid., 146. On killing adult males and taking women and children prisoner, see Carleton to Captain Peter W. L. Plympton at Fort Union, Santa Fe, July 29, 1863, or Carleton to Major Joseph Smith at Fort Stanton, Santa Fe, July 29, 1863, both in ibid., 120–121.

32. The description of how Carson organized the Navajo campaign comes from H. R. Tilton, the surgeon who attended Carson five years later and reportedly heard it from Carson himself. Dunlay,
Kit Carson and the Indians,
277–278.

33. Carson to Carleton, July 24, 1863, quoted in full in Dunlay,
Kit Carson and the Indians,
283.

34. The first quote is from Carleton to Carson, Santa Fe, August 18, 1863, in U.S. Congress,
Condition of the Indian Tribes,
128. The italics are in the original
.
The second quote is from Carson to Cutler, August 19, 1863, cited in Dunlay,
Kit Carson and the Indians,
280–281.

35. For the plan to raise volunteer forces in each county, see Carleton to Thomas, Santa Fe, August 23, 1863, in U.S. Congress,
Condition of the Indian Tribes,
129–130.

36. Baca’s quote comes from Baca to Cutler, December 7, 1863, General Orders No. 3, in Correll,
Through White Men’s Eyes,
3:413. The report about Baca taking hundreds of captives is from Nathan Bibo, “Reminiscences of Early Days in New Mexico,”
Albuquerque Evening Herald,
June 11, 1922. Subagent Bibo claimed that he knew “hundreds” of Indian prisoners who “married or mixed with the frontier population . . .
always content and applying themselves to their housework or in the open just the same as the balance of the people.”

37. Dunlay,
Kit Carson and the Indians,
289–300; Oldham,
Albert H. Pfeiffer,
95–99. The quotes are from Pfeiffer to Lawce G. Murphey, January 20, 1864, in Lawrence C. Kelly, ed.,
Navajo Roundup: Selected Correspondence of Kit Carson’s Expedition Against the Navajo, 1863–1865
(Boulder, CO: Pruett, 1970), 102–104; and Kit Carson’s report, in Dunlay,
Kit Carson and the Indians,
296.

38. Carleton to Thomas, Santa Fe, February 7, 1864, in Oldham,
Albert H. Pfeiffer,
102.

39. The quotes are from Dunlay,
Kit Carson and the Indians,
296, 300.

40. On the number of Navajos who surrendered in March 1864, see Carleton to Major Henry Wallen, Commander at Fort Sumner, Santa Fe, March 11, 1864, in U.S. Congress,
Condition of the Indian Tribes,
165.

41. On the attack against the Navajos walking toward Fort Canby, see Carey to Asst. Adj. General, Fort Canby, April 29, 1864, in Correll,
Through White Men’s Eyes,
4:152. Similar attacks had occurred at other posts. E. W. Eaton, who was in command at Fort Wingate in Navajo country, declared that when the first large party of Navajos were on their way to Fort Wingate to surrender, “they were pursued by a party of Mexicans who ran after them to take their flocks and herds . . . The Mexicans killed some of the Navajoes and captured some captives and stock . . . The Indians were in sufficient force to have resisted them, but were coming in to surrender themselves, and made no resistance for fear that the troops would attack them. There were not over fifty or sixty in the party.” Deposition of Commander Eaton, n.p., 1865, in U.S. Congress,
Condition of the Indian Tribes,
336.

42. On the attack near Albuquerque, see Brotherton to Asst. Adj. Gen., May 2, 1864, in Correll,
Through White Men’s Eyes,
4:148–159. Captain McCabe offered a different version of events, which also involved the taking of captives. See Correll,
Through White Men’s Eyes,
4:159–161.

43. On Baca’s activities, see McFerran to Carey, Albuquerque, May 5, 1864, in Correll,
Through White Men’s Eyes,
4:164–165. For the tribulations of Herrero’s niece, see Brugge,
Navajos in the Catholic Church Records of New Mexico,
98–100; and Bailey,
Indian Slave Trade in the Southwest,
110–111. The report of Navajos held in bondage in Cebolleta and some other neighboring communities appears in Campbell to Carleton, March 3, 1864, in Brugge,
Navajos in the Catholic Church Records of New Mexico,
97.

44. The lists of Indian peons in Costilla and Conejos Counties are included in their entirety in McNitt,
Navajo Wars,
441–446.

45. On Carson’s complaints about the “independent campaigns” and Connelly’s proclamation, see Carson to A.A.G., April 13, 1864, and Governor Henry Connelly’s proclamation, Santa Fe, May 4, 1864, both in Bailey,
Indian Slave Trade in the Southwest,
106 and 107–109, respectively. For the larger story of removal and beyond, see L. R. Bailey,
The Long Walk: A History of the Navajo Wars, 1846–68
(Tucson: Westernlore Press, 1988); and Peter Iverson,
Diné: A History of the Navajos
(Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2002), passim.

46. The census of the Navajos at Bosque Redondo appears in General Orders No. 4, Santa Fe, February 18, 1865, in U.S. Congress,
Condition of the Indian Tribes,
264.

47. Testimony of Chief Justice Kirby Benedict, Santa Fe, July 4, 1865, in U.S. Congress,
Condition of the Indian Tribes,
325–327. The italics are mine.

48. The quotes are from testimony of Chief Justice Kirby Benedict, July 4, 1865.

12. THE OTHER SLAVERY AND THE OTHER EMANCIPATION

1. John Greenleaf Whittier, editorial,
Pennsylvania Freeman,
Philadelphia, May 10, 1838, and James G. Birney, open letter to the
Liberator,
Boston, January 18, 1839, both quoted in Linda K. Kerber, “The Abolitionist Perception of the Indian,”
Journal of American History
62:2 (September 1975), 273–274. The possibilities and limitations of eastern abolitionist thinking about Indians are clear in the writings of novelist, women’s rights activist, and abolitionist Lydia Maria Child. After the Civil War, she wrote “An Appeal for the Indians,” her most ambitious text about the condition of Native Americans. Child began her essay with a reference to the recent sectional dispute: “There was too much excitement and anxiety to admit of attention to any other topic, but I think the time has now come when, without intermitting our vigilant watch over the rights of black men, it is our duty to arouse the nation to a sense of its guilt concerning the red men.” In twenty-four pages, Child offered a clear-eyed narrative of abuse perpetrated against Indians through much of the nineteenth century, including passages about lawless bands of Georgia slaveholders “going into Florida, capturing whomsoever they pleased, and selling them into slavery”; John C. Frémont’s pathfinders pushing into California and shooting Indians “in mere sport”; and Oregon gold hunters burning wigwams simply to take possession of Indian lands. Child’s text is quite typical of the abolitionist perspective in that it touched on a multiplicity of ills that affected Indians but at the same time prevented concrete action to be taken on a single issue on behalf of Natives. The quotes are from Lydia Maria Child, “An Appeal for the Indians,” in
A Lydia Maria Child Reader,
ed. Carolyn L. Karcher (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997), 84, 86, 88. Child’s interest in Indians spanned her entire life, beginning with her first novel,
Hobomok,
published in 1824, about an upper-class white woman who married and had a child with an Indian chief. For a brief but insightful discussion of
Hobomok,
see Karen L. Kilcup, ed.,
Soft Canons: American Women Writers and Masculine Tradition
(Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1999), 31–38. When the Cherokee removal controversy erupted in the late 1820s, Child was already getting involved in political journalism. She wrote a revisionist history of the Cherokees and argued that they should be allowed to retain what was left of “their native inheritance.” Child, “An Appeal for the Indians,” 85–90.

2. When New Mexico became organized as a territory as a result of a federal act passed on September 9, 1850, another statute provided that “all the laws passed by the Legislative Assembly and Governor shall be submitted to the Congress of the United States and if disapproved shall be null and void.” The New Mexican laws regulating servitude can be found in John Codman Hurd,
The Law of Freedom and Bondage in the United States,
2 vols. (New York: Little, Brown, 1862), 2:209–210; and
Laws of the Territory of New Mexico Passed by the Legislative Assembly, Session of 1858–9
(Santa Fe: A. De Marle, 1859), 24–25. Information about the preliminary discussions and bill in Congress nullifying New Mexico’s indenture codes can be found in John Armor Bingham,
Bill and Report of John A. Bingham, and Vote on Its Passage . . .
(1858; repr., Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Library, 2005); available online at
http://name .umdl.umich.edu/ABJ5148.0001.001
. For the legal history of these debates stretching back to the 1840s, see the excellent article by Kiser, “A ‘Charming Name for a Species of Slavery,’” 169–189.

3. The quote is from An Act to Secure Freedom to All Persons Within the Territories of the United States, House of Representatives, Washington, D.C., June 19, 1862,
http: //www.freedmen.umd.edu/freeterr.htm
.

4. William Frederick Doolittle, comp.,
The Doolittle Family in America,
quoted in Francis Paul Prucha,
The Great Father: The United States Government and the American Indians,
2 vols. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1984), 1:479–480, 485–486. C. Joseph Genetin-Pilawa has shown that U.S. Indian policy did not necessarily have to result in Indian dispossession and forced assimilation. Genetin-Pilawa,
Crooked Paths to Allotment: The Fight over Federal Indian Policy After the Civil War
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012), 56, 76.

5. The quote is from U.S. Congress,
Condition of the Indian Tribes,
4. The other committee members were Senators Lafayette S. Foster of Connecticut and James W. Nesmith of Oregon and Representatives William Windom of Minnesota, Asahel W. Hubbard of Iowa, William Higby of California, and Lewis W. Ross of Illinois. The 531-page report is a gold mine of information, especially for New Mexico. The report contains many factual errors and unsubstantiated claims, and, of course, it was in part motivated by politics. See Prucha,
The Great Father,
1:486–487; and Harry Kelsey, “The Doolittle Report of 1867: Its Preparation and Shortcomings,”
Arizona and the West
17 (Summer 1975), 107–120. Even so, it provided a wealth of firsthand information.

6.
Santa Fe Gazette,
August 5, 1865, quoted in Bailey,
Indian Slave Trade in the Southwest,
175. Secretary Harlan instructed the commissioner of Indian affairs, William Dole, to “prepare a letter to the President, advising him that the law abolishing slavery in New Mexico is disregarded, and that there is evidence in your office that the practice of selling Indian children still continues.” These instructions are quoted in Rael-Gálvez, “Identifying Captivity and Capturing Identity,” 221–222.

7. The quotes are from “Report of Special Agent Julius K. Graves, No. 40, New Mexico Superintendency,” in
Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs for the Year 1866
(Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1866), 131–134. See also Bailey,
Indian Slave Trade in the Southwest,
172–173; William A. Keleher,
Turmoil in New Mexico, 1846–1868
(Santa Fe: Rydal Press, 1952), 364–368.

8. The quotes are from “Report of Special Agent Julius K. Graves, No. 40,” 132–134.

9. Michael Vorenberg,
Final Freedom: The Civil War, the Abolition of Slavery, and the Thirteenth Amendment
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001), passim. Justice Samuel Miller’s reasoning appears in the Slaughter-House Cases, 83 U.S. 36 (1873). See also Baher Azmy, “Modern Slavery and a Reconstructed Civil Rights
Agenda,”
Fordham Law Review
71:3 (2002), 981–1061; and Eric Foner,
Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party Before the Civil War
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 37. Foner’s book remains the most insightful investigation into the ideology of free labor in the 1850s and 1860s.