"It wasn’t angry, middle-aged white guys who first brought slavery to America’s shore. The “peculiar institution” was already here. Indians had been making slaves of their enemies for years.

These slaves were kept in the villages to do menial tasks such as weaving mats, collecting firewood, and helping to set up winter hunting camps. It was not the kind of hard labor that Europeans’ slaves were often put to — after all, the Tuscarora had no sugar plantation death farms like the Europeans had in the Indies, or even the back-breaking tobacco, cotton and rice plantations of these strange white men.

Doubtless they were ridiculed. A slave was the lowest member of Indian society: below warriors, laborers, children and women. Still, what’s a little ridicule?

The worst part was their initiation. According to John Lawson, who lived among them for some time, Indians cut the skin of their newly-captured slaves at the base of their toes, then peeled the top flesh back half way. The front half of each foot was then cut off and the flap of skin wrapped around the stump to heal. Naturally there was no medication to ease the pain. The assumption was that, so hobbled, a slave would have a rough time running away. Even so, a few managed to find freedom."

Get the Story:
Bill Hand: Slavery among the Indians (The Newbern Sun Journal 3/28)