Introduction: Contextualizing Native American Adoption, Captivity, and Slavery

Abstract

This book gathers together the majority of the papers presented at the conference “Adoption, Captivity and Slavery: Changing Meanings in Colonial North America” that took place at the British Museum in London on February 17 and 18, 2008. The conference was planned to fit in with the many national events that were organized to mark the anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade in Great Britain in 1807 and our intention was to mark these events with a fresh examination of the Anglo-American and indigenous context for slavery and its associated practices of captivity, forced labor, and adoption. As the conference organizers we felt that the timing for such an event seemed appropriate as this broader context would give us an opportunity to bring to public attention the largely unacknowledged history of Native American¹ enslavement taking place in a precontact situation at each other’s hands, and later in the postcontact period, at the hands of British and other colonial powers.