Welcome to Stolen Relations

Please note: the headings and terms in this database are largely derived from archival documents, which often contain terms, phrases, and biases that reduce, minimize, or alter Native identities and views of the world.

As part of our commitment to decolonize and recontextualize these sources, please consult the additional information displayed at right or via the info-circle icon to better interpret and understand the headings and terms given in the primary sources.

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Decolonizing statement

Please note: the headings and terms below are largely derived from archival documents, which often contain terms, phrases, and biases that reduce, minimize, or alter Native identities and views of the world. Read the full statement.

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European colonizers often assigned European names to Indigenous peoples (or garbled their Native names). When possible, we have used or restored the Indigenous names of people mentioned. In many instances, enslavers simply did not give a name at all in order to facilitate erasure and ensure conquest is complete.

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Timeline

Dates

  • Pre-colonized times [1200 CE]

    Indigenous people lived and thrived in these vast continents for millennia before the arrival of Europeans. Europeans, when they started invading in the years following 1492, were not arriving in unoccupied lands. Instead, they faced large and powerful confederacies who cultivated the land, were excellent hunters and fishers, and created extensive regional trade networks from the coast far to the inland.

  • 1492 - Spanish and Portuguese Colonization of the Americas

    Starting in 1492, Spanish colonizers began invading the Americas. Their aggressive "extractive colonialism" relied upon the labor of Native Americans to work the land and mine gold and silver, among other things. The Spanish and Portuguese likely enslaved well over a million Natives in the first century of colonization.

  • 1492 - Columbus’s first arrival in the Americas

    On October 12, 1492, the three ships commanded by Christopher Columbus arrived on Guanahani Island (now San Salvador) in the beautiful archipelago that we now call the Bahamas. The Lucayans he met on Guanahani and elsewhere were highly developed, seafaring people who built towns, grew a variety of crops, smelted copper and gold, and traded with other islands. Columbus abducted two dozen people as captives after his first voyage and proposed to the King and Queen of Spain a regularized Native American slave trade to finance colonization (a proposal that was rejected). He personally was responsible for the enslavement of hundreds, if not thousands of Natives.

  • 1500-1501 - Portuguese explorer Gaspar Cortereal enslaves Abenakis from Maine

    What we refer to as “exploration” often had direct negative impacts on Indigenous communities. European explorers frequently abducted Natives from the coastlines, sometimes to sell into slavery, and sometimes to pilfer information for their use. In 1500, a Portuguese explorer named Gaspar Cortereal abducted fifty Abenaki from the coast of what is now Maine (and possibly other places) and sold them into slavery in Lisbon.

  • 1539-41 - Hernando de Soto entrada

    The Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto invaded the southeastern part of North America, resulting in a destructive three-year series of conflicts with southeast Native nations, leading to enslavement of local populations and the spread of European diseases.

  • 1542 - Spain passes the New Laws

    The New Laws were an attempt to curb the enslavement and genocide of Native Americans in Spanish-claimed territories in the Caribbean, Central, and South America. While not entirely effective, they focused especially on the encomienda system, in which planters were given the lease of land and Indigenous people to work on the land, which amounted to functional slavery.

  • 1552 - Las Casas published A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies

    Bartolome de las Casas was part of the first generation of conquistadors from Spain to the Americas, was a slaveholder, and saw firsthand the abuses of Native Americans. He spent thirty years exposing the abuses of Spanish colonization and advocating for the better treatment of Indigenous people. In 1552, he published A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies. Its graphic descriptions of slaughter and enslavement remain a gripping source of Spanish conquest.

  • 1576-1578 - Martin Frobisher steals at least four Inuit from Baffin Island (Canada)

    Sailing for the English, Martin Frobisher explored the northern reaches of what is now Canada, abducting several Inuits, and took them to England. Three survived and were paraded around London: Kalicho (Calichough), Arnaq, and Nutaaq.

  • 1580 - English, French, and Dutch Colonization

    Attempting to repeat the "success" of the Spanish, other European nations sporadically explored Native territories in the sixteenth century, even if they did not set up successful colonies at first. But even “exploration” was destructive, as most European explorers abducted Natives from the coastlines, sometimes to ply them for knowledge of the region and waterways, but sometimes to be sold into slavery.

  • 1585-7 - English attempts to colonize Roanoke (North Carolina)

    The first serious attempt to colonize by the English came in the 1580s, at Roanoke, in what is now the Outer Banks of North Carolina. As Grenville soon learned, this was not vacant land ready for the taking. Early instructions for the Roanoke colonists that "no Indian be forced to labor vnwillyngly" and that no colonist should "stryke or mysuse any Indian." After two primary attempts, the Roanoke colony was abandoned.

  • 1607 - English found Jamestown and Virginia

    After decades of attempts elsewhere, English colonists built their first permanent colony at Jamestown, in the heart of Tsenacommacah, which was home to 20,000 Natives confederated as the Powhatans, and led by Wahunsonacock. As with most other successful colonies, the fragile outpost of Jamestown was permitted to last only with the permission of Wahunsonacock.

  • 1609 - Bermuda shipwreck

    An English ship heading to Virginia runs aground on the reefs of Bermuda in the North Atlantic. It quickly becomes a key English colony that plays an important role in the Caribbean Indigenous slave trade.

  • 1610-11 - First Powhatan War (Virginia)

    This brief but brutal war against the Paspahegh nation, one of the Powhatan tribes, included a brazen raid on their primary town and the capture and murder of the Paspahegh sunksqua and her children. Records also note the enslavement of a Paspahegh man named Kempes.

  • 1612 - Epenow captured on Cape Cod

    A Wampanoag man was slave-raided off the coast of Cape Cod by the English but managed to return and bring retribution to a later English ship.

  • 1614 - Squanto captured on Cape Cod

    Twenty-four Wampanoags captured on Cape Cod and taken to Magala, Spain, and sold into slavery. This included Tisquantum (Squanto), who found his freedom and returned to Dawnland (New England) a few years before the arrival of the “Pilgrims” in 1620.

  • 1619 - First importation of enslaved Africans to Virginia

    In this year a ship named the White Lion brought approximately thirty enslaved Africans to Virginia, having stolen them from a Portuguese ship in the Caribbean. This marks the beginning of African slavery in what later became the United States, but Indigenous people had been enslaved in North America well before this date.

  • 1620 - "Pilgrims" found Plymouth Colony

    English non-separating puritans establish a colony on the site of a Patuxet village vacated by diseases (and the former home of Squanto).

  • 1622 - Second Powhatan War (Virginia)

    The confederated Powhatans protested English colonization in a surprise attack against colonial homes in Virginia. The conflict turned colonists more firmly against the Powhatans and led to local enslavement.

  • 1626 - English colonists murder and enslave Kalinago on St. Kitts

    Led by Thomas Warner, English and French colonists on St. Kitts band together to murder more than 100 Kalinago (Carib), including the Chief Tegremond, and enslave or banish the rest from the island.

  • 1627 - Kalinago captives are brought as slaves to Virginia

    An English merchant named Captain Sampson brought an unknown number of Kalinagos to Virginia to sell into slavery. The Kalinagos ran away, and the Virginia authorities ordered them to be hunted down and hanged. It is likely they found refuge among the Powhatans.

  • 1630 - Massachusetts Bay Colony founded by non-separating puritans

    The Massachusetts Bay Colony inaugurated the beginning of a larger-scale puritan migration to Dawnland (New England). New colonists quickly expanded into Native lands, which put greater strain on Native communities.

  • 1630 - Providence Island Colony founded (Caribbean)

    Puritans also founded a little island colony off the coast of Central America. It became the first English colony to have a majority enslaved population, which included enslaved Indigenous people.

  • 1636 - Barbados institutes race-based slavery

    The colony’s leadership decreed that any Africans or Native Americans brought to the island without a contract would be slaves for life.

  • 1636-1637 - Pequot War (Connecticut)

    A vicious war of extermination fought against the Pequots, resulting in hundreds of Pequot men, women, and children sold into slavery in New England and the Caribbean. It also resulted in a large-scale takeover of Pequot land by the English.

  • 1641 - Body of Liberties (Massachusetts)

    An early attempt to codify law in Massachusetts colony. The 91st point permitted enslavement of captives taken during "just wars.""

  • 1643 - Governor Kieft’s War in New Netherlands

    A powerful war against the Munsee and their allies in the region surrounding the Dutch town of New Amsterdam (after 1664 New York). Dutch soldiers took captives.

  • 1644 - Third Powhatan War (Virginia)

    Protesting colonization, the Powhatans tried once again to reject English colonization. Virginians respond with mass murder and enslavement of the Powhatans and their allies.

  • 1662 - Virginia codifies multi-generational slavery

    This statute puts into law the principle of partus sequitur ventrem (the condition of the child follows the mother), ensuring that children of enslaved women of color would also be enslaved for life.

  • 1675-1676 - King Philip’s War (New Engalnd)

    This devastating pan-Indigenous uprising against the English resulted in the enslavement of more than 2,000 Wampanoag, Nipmuc, and Narragansett individuals. Approximately half were enslaved locally, and another 1,000 sent to Bermuda, Barbados, Jamaica, and even the Azores and Tangier.

  • 1675-1676 - Bacon’s Indian War (Virginia)

    A local dispute between colonists and Natives soon turned into a war of extermination and enslavement led by Nathaniel Bacon, who was determined to eradicate Natives to make room for English expansion.

  • 1680 - Pueblo Revolt (New Mexico)

    Decades of evangelization and coercion by Franciscan priests motivated the Pueblos to wage a temporarily successful war against Spanish colonization.

  • 1680-1720 - Southeast Indigenous Slave Trade

    The largest Indigenous slave trade in the English colonies lasted for almost forty years and led the enslavement of perhaps as many as 51,000 Natives ranging from what is now North Carolina to Florida. Many were enslaved locally, but many more were shipped to North American and Caribbean colonies.

  • 1700-1780 - Mosquito Shore Indian Slave Trade (Central America)

    A different Indigenous slave trade took place on the Mosquito Shore, a 500-mile stretch of Miskitu land that is now Nicaragua and Honduras, leading to perhaps as many as 20,000 Natives being enslaved. Many captives were sent to the Caribbean and North America as slaves.

  • 1702-1713 - Queen Anne’s War

    A prolonged war of the English and their Native allies against the Spanish and French and their Native allies, it led to renewed enslavement in New England and large-scale slave raiding on Spanish Catholic mission towns in Florida.

  • 1704 - English slave raids on Apalachee mission towns in Florida

    Led by Colonel James Moore, 1,000 English-allied Natives and fifty English soldiers marched from South Carolina to Spanish Florida, where they burned mission towns and took thousands of captives, which they sold as slaves.

  • 1711-1715 - Tuscarora War (North Carolina)

    A valiant war of resistance led by the Tuscaroras against the southeast Indigenous slave trade, which resulted in the enslavement of many Tuscaroras and their dispersal, leading to them moving to New York to become the sixth member of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Confederacy.

  • 1715-1717 - Yamasee War (Carolinas)

    This pan-Indigenous uprising against English colonization and the southeast Indigenous slave trade resulted in an increase in slave raiding, but ultimately signaled the end of large-scale slave trading of Native peoples in the region.

  • 1729 - Natchez revolt (Louisiana)

    A series of attacks by the Natchez nation in protest of French colonization, leading to the murder and enslavement of many Natchez, with approximately 480 sold into slavery in the Caribbean.

  • 1741 - Jamaica Indigenous Slave Trade Law

    In response to the Mosquito Shore Indigenous slave trade and the political consequences during a time of war, Jamaican officials try to prohibit ongoing slave trading.

  • 1754-1761 - Seven Years’s War

    A global war between European powers, the North American segment was called the French and Indian War, which led to bounties against Native Americans and resulted in the French ceding their colonies in North America. As in most previous wars, bounties were placed on the bodies and scalps of Native Americans.

  • 1763 - Ottawa chief Pontiac’s War (Ohio)

    The disappointment of the French and Indian War led to the Ottawa chief Pontiac leading a series of attacks on British outposts in what is now Ohio and Michigan.

  • 1772 - Robin v. Hardaway court case (Virginia)

    In this important freedom suit in which twelve descendants of an enslaved Indigenous woman named Judith successfully sued for their freedom in Virginia.

  • 1774-6 - Cherokee frontier wars

    In the years between the French and Indian War and the American Revolution, Americans continually pressed westward into Native territory, prompting raids, counterraids, and captive-taking.

  • 1776-1783 - American Revolution

    The War of American Independence was two wars in one: the first was against the British on the East Coast, and the second was a war of expansion against Native nations on the western edge of settlement. Americans took captives and enslaved Natives during these raids.

  • 1780-1830 - Indigenous freedom suits

    After the American Revolution, courts in the United States increasingly favored enslaved Natives who sued for their freedom and who could trace their lineage back to a free maternal ancestor. Thousands of Native Americans found their freedom through local courts.

  • 1801 - 1970 - Federally funded boarding schools

    Starting in 1801 with Spring Place Mission in Georgia, the federal government worked with religious organizations to run schools for Native American children where half of the day was spent in the classroom and the other half was spent in labor. During this time period, more than 400 Indigenous boarding schools were funded by the government, leading to tens of thousands of children being removed (sometimes forcibly) from their homes.

  • 1803 - Louisiana Purchase

    A secret deal led to the "purchase" of the Louisiana Territory from France, home to millions of Native Americans. This led to the long-term invasion of the mid-western and upper-midwestern portion of the continent, sparking conflicts and captive-taking.

  • 1807/1808 - Ending of the trans-Atlantic African slave trade

    Both Britain and the United States ended the trans-Atlantic African slave trade, which also implicitly ended the Carribean Indigenous slave trade. Illegal slave trading continued for decades.

  • 1830 - Indian Removal Act

    Promoted by President Andrew Jackson and passed by Congress, this act gave legal weight to a process that had been underway for decades and would continue for another century, as dozens on Native nations were forcibly removed from their homelands and taken to territory west of the Mississippi. The wars surrounding removals involved stealing and captivity, especially of children.

  • 1834 - British Emancipation

    After hundreds of years of legal slavery, Britain proclaimed a general emancipation of enslaved people in their colonies, with an imposed four years of indentured servitude in most places.

  • 1838 - Pierre Choteau, senior v. Marguerite (a woman of colour)

    Marguerite sued for her freedom as the descendant of Marie Scipion, a Natchez woman enslaved by the French in 1731. The case made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court before she was freed.

  • 1848: Mexican-American War

    This war of American expansion against Mexico led to large sections of the southwest claimed by the United States. Hundreds of thousands of Native Americans suddenly found themselves within the boundaries of the United States and had to deal with aggressive American wars and removals against them as a result.

  • 1849 - California gold rush

    The discovery of gold in north-central California was a disaster for Native nations in the region, who were suddenly overrun with American prospectors and whose labor was often commandeered to search for gold.

  • 1850 - California licenses the mass indenture of Native children

    Even as it was admitted into the United States as a "free" state, California authorized the mass indenture of Indigenous children, which funneled hundreds of Native youth into long-term coercive labor situations.

  • 1861-1865 - Civil War

    This war against slavery contained another, lesser-known, war in the American west against Native nations, leading to capture, enslavement, and removal of Indigenous people from New Mexico to California.

  • 1862-1863 - Diné Long Walk (New Mexico)

    The U.S. military waged a war against the Diné (Navajo) nation, rounding them up and forcing nearly 9,000 of them to walk 400 miles to Bosque Redondo, a military prison in New Mexico. Hundreds died along the way, and hundreds more were slave-raided during the wars.

  • 1865 - Thirteenth Amendment

    After the Civil War, U.S. Congress famously passed the Thirteenth Amendment, which ended legal slavery with a loophole, as a punishment for a crime. The amendment also did not specifically mention Native Americans, and most enslavers of Indigenous people in the southwest did not believe it applied to them.

  • 1866 - Freedmen are required to be given citizenship

    In the Treaty of 1866, the U.S. government required the formerly slaveholding tribes in Oklahoma to extend citizenship to the Black and mixed-race Indigenous people they had held as slaves (called freedmen). This mandate was not followed completely at the time and has continued to cause controversy into the present.

  • 1867 - Condition of the Indian Tribes released

    After the Civil War, President Johnson and Congress commissioned a large investigation into ongoing enslavement of Native Americans, especially in the southwest. The report included a 500-page appendix with direct testimony regarding ongoing servitude and enslavement.

  • 1867 - Anti-Peonage Act

    In response to the Condition of the Indian Tribes report, Congress passed the Anti-Peonage Act, which specifically outlawed coerced servitude, enslavement, and peonage of Indigenous people and others anywhere in the United States. Congress found it almost impossible to enforce in the southwest.

  • 1879 - Carlisle School founded

    Colonel Richard Henry Pratt founded what became the model off-reservation Indian boarding school in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, in an unused military barracks. His introduction of the "outing system,"" in which Native children were sent into white homes to work as servants, perpetuated Native servitude and became a popular model for other boarding schools.

  • 1924 - Indian Citizenship Act

    Although Black people were given citizenship after the Civil War, it was not until 1924 that the United States offered citizenship universally to Native Americans.

  • 1928 - The Problem of Indian Administration

    Called the Meriam Report after its primary author, Lewis Meriam, this governmental publication summarized the many problems caused by U.S. policies, including reports of the trauma created by boarding schools and their failure to provide real education.

  • 1930 - Senate committee report on boarding schools

    This senate committee confirmed just one aspect of the many abuses of the Indian boarding schools, namely, the systematic kidnapping of Diné children in order to force them to attend.

  • 1934 - Indian Reorganization Act

    Written partially in response to the Meriam Report, these reforms touched on four main areas in attempts to deal with the complaints of Native leaders: Indian Self-Government; Special Education for Indians; Indian Lands; and the Court of Indian Affairs. Native communities were given more control of Indian boarding schools.

  • 1947 - Mormon adoption program

    Leadership of the Mormon Church began promoting the fostering and adoption of Native American children as a way of fulfilling Mormon theological ideals as well as providing what they saw as practical help to the problem of poverty and isolation. The program grew quickly until Native protests shut it down in the 1970s, but not before as many as 60,000 Native children were fostered or adopted.

  • 1968 - American Indian Movement (AIM) founded in Minneapolis

    During the Civil Rights Movement, Indigenous people increasingly promoted self-determination in all areas of life, including tribal governance, education, and sovereignty. AIM staged powerful protests in urban areas, as well as two infamous standoffs with the federal government at Alcatraz and on the Pine Ridge Reservation.

  • 1958-1967 - Indian Adoption Project

    The United States Government, too, turned to adoption as a way to speed up the assimilation of Native Americans, and hundreds of state, local, and religious organizations followed suit. Thousands of additional Native children were adopted through this program through the 1970s.

  • 1978 - Indian Child Welfare Act

    In response to the protests of Native leaders, the brazen adoption programs of the Mormons, federal and state governments, and religious organizations were reigned in with the passage of the Indian Child Welfare Act, which placed much more oversight in the hands of tribes and mandated preference for Indigenous children to be placed in Native American homes.

  • 2007 - United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples

    As collective awareness of the injustices of Indigenous people globally spread, the United Nations passed this important measure that intended to articulate the basic rights of all Indigenous peoples. The United States has not formally voted to adopt it, but has indicated high level support of the declaration.

  • 2016 - Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women movement

    This movement seeks to highlight the abductionand murder of Indigenous women and children over the long course of U.S. history, something that persists into the present. In 2016, 5,712 Native women were reported as missing, although federal and state tabulations are vastly insufficient, and the complexity of legal jurisdiction means little action is taken.

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Indigenous Voices

Assonet Band of Wampanoags

“This is a quote from someone interviewed as part of the Indigenous Voices section. It could be a couple of sentences long, and might accompany audio or video. If audio or video are unavailable, a photo of the speaker or other relevant subject would work, too.”

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