Summary By Andres Resendez

956 Words2 Pages

When the world takes about slavery in the New World, the immediate thought is the capture and sale of African slaves who were then transported to North America. This is not the case, since the time of Columbus, Indian slavery was illegal in much of the American continent. Although it was illegal the practice was used as an open secret. With this book I feel that Andres Resendez keeps a deliberate intellectual distance, brings evidence and constructing careful arguments on the subject. With all this material the we can see the horrors and cruelty of the enslavement of Native Americans from North America and the Caribbean broke down entire nations. This enslavement erased cultural and political ecosystems.
The purpose of this book is to show …show more content…

Eventually, Sutter owned several hundred Native American slaves, in which he treated badly. Fellow slave owners even felt that Sutter was to aggressive. We have a problem here and that is, this is technically illegal but practiced openly. After the Mexican Revolution, colonists established the baronial rancho system, this is the pretty much used Indian labor was needed to sustain the huge ranchos. Mexico forbade Indian slavery so the land barons convinced Indians to work their fields. Once slavery was outlawed by the Spanish and then the Mexican and the American governments, those that were interested in profiting from this deployed a bouquet of legal terms and frameworks to continue the practice. Just like Andres Resendez mentions, "southern states enacted the infamous Black Codes aimed at restricting the freedom of former slaves…. white southerners sought to nullify the provisions of the 13th Amendment." (Resendez 266)The tactics they enlisted were almost identical to those that had kept Indians in servitude in the West and in Mexico long after slavery had been made illegal. Gen. Mariano Vallejo, who enslaved 700 Indian workers, helped draft California’s first piece of legislation, the Act for the Government and Protection of Indians in 1850. This act legalized Indian slavery. Under the law, Indians had to be able to show proof of employment, passport, or …show more content…

I felt that Andres Resendez met his is goals by incarnating what the Native Americans went through to the similarities of others. This book also brings awareness to the fact that Native Americans were enslaved and had to stand up foot their freedom. I feel that this book and movement ties into a lot of the themes and social movements we have talked about in class. The most comparable to this movement in itself is the civil rights movement. The civil rights and Native rights movements of the 1960s and 1970s pretty much changed America. The marches, sit-ins and social groups that formed made these movements powerful and they were always aimed toward the mistreatment by the government or single institution. Both of these movements were driven by a thirst for justice, freedom, and respect. The civil rights movement had the goal of full presence of African American citizens as self-sufficient, self-sustaining members of society. The Native rights movement had two goals, one was achieving the civil rights of Native peoples as American citizens. The second was the sovereign rights of Native nations. Both movements fought against

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