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In her family, Yolanda Leyva has heard the tale of her Indigenous great-grandmother Canuta, who was portrayed as having a young love story. According to this narrative, in the 1850s, a wealthy European couple found the abandoned Rarámuri infant near their estate in Chihuahua, Mexico, and decided to adopt her. Canuta eventually married the couple’s son.

Leyva’s father alluded to this story over the years. “She was pure Indian,” he would affectionately say in Spanish, bringing to mind the petite, dark-skinned abuelita from his childhood.

For Leyva, a history professor at the University of Texas-El Paso, the story felt shrouded in mystery. Motivated to explore her family history further, she uncovered a potentially more sorrowful reality—Canuta may have been kidnapped from her Rarámuri community and forced into servitude on the Chihuahua estate.

“There’s a lengthy history in Mexico of taking underprivileged children, raising them, and then making them servants,” Leyva noted. “Our family preferred to portray it as a lovely romance, but it reflects a classic tale of a disadvantaged girl who either willingly or unwillingly had children with the son — including my grandfather.”

This narrative provides a window into a widespread yet often overlooked issue—the enslavement of millions of Indigenous people throughout the Americas, including North America. This practice existed before and alongside the enslavement of over 12 million Africans in the Americas, though it differed in methods and visibility.

Currently, two initiatives are in progress in the U.S. aimed at documenting this neglected aspect of American history through digital archives. These efforts will not only promote academic research but also offer healing for descendants of those who endured slavery. Together, they embody parallel attempts to record and publicize what historian Andrés Reséndez describes as “a profoundly important yet tragic part of our shared history on the American continent.”

Reséndez, a history professor at the University of California-Davis, estimates that between 2.5 million and 5 million Indigenous individuals were enslaved from 1491 to 1900.

Indigenous slaves were assigned various tasks, including ranching and construction, but they were predominantly involved in the mining sector, a crucial element of colonial Latin America’s economy. Reséndez emphasized that Mexico’s mining industry alone represented 12 California Gold Rushes throughout the 16th to 18th centuries.

Certain individuals have made their mark in history, like La Malinche, a Nahua girl sold into slavery in the early 1500s who later became Cortes’ interpreter. In the late 1600s, Tituba, an Indigenous woman likely from Central America, was purchased by Puritan minister Samuel Parris in Barbados and became the first woman accused of witchcraft in Salem, Massachusetts.

However, the majority toiled away in obscurity. Like Leyva’s great-grandmother, many were enslaved as children rather than as able-bodied adults. For example, a state-ordered count of enslaved Indigenous people in Southern Colorado in 1865 revealed 149 individuals, with 100 of them being aged 12 or under at the time of purchase.

Reséndez highlights in his book, “The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America,” that most Indigenous slaves were women and children, contrasting with the adult males typical of the African slave trade. He attributes part of this to sexual exploitation and reproductive capacity, as well as the perception that women were more docile and possessed skills—like weaving and gathering—more beneficial to European colonists than the hunting and fishing skills of Indigenous men.

Similarly, children were seen as versatile and quickly learned European languages, even developing an affinity towards their enslavers.

Yet, as Indigenous slavery was largely illegal in many regions of the New World, many, including Leyva’s great-grandmother, labored out of sight, lacking resources or support systems to facilitate escape.

Leyva is among those sharing oral histories for Native Bound Unbound, a digital archive project based in Santa Fe, New Mexico, led by anthropologist and historian Estevan Rael-Gálvez. In her exploration, Leyva found that though her great-grandmother grew up outside the traditional Rarámuri territory, she lived in an area known for harvesting peyote.

Leyva couldn’t find documented evidence of Canuta’s marriage, but she did discover records indicating Canuta had several children, the first born when she was just 12. One specific record described Canuta as a peóna, or criada—essentially a servant and not part of the family—leading Leyva to uncover a troubling reality.

The birth records did not list any father. Other documents also depicted Leyva’s grandfather as a servant on the estate, prompting her to ponder whether he was aware of the likely truth.

When Rael-Gálvez visited her university to discuss the Native Bound Unbound project, it was an awakening for Leyva to realize that her family’s story, along with those shared by friends, had critical significance.

“Indigenous slavery has been left in the shadows,” she remarked. “It’s a subject rarely discussed, often reduced to family tales told to make the realities less harsh. And this lasted for centuries.”

Documenting Indigenous slavery as a collective effort

Rael-Gálvez was similarly motivated by his own family history. Growing up, he heard stories about two enslaved Indigenous ancestors, with one from the Pawnee tribe and another from the Navajo. He wrote his doctoral dissertation on the subject, realizing his experience was not an isolated case.

For the following two decades, even while fulfilling roles such as New Mexico state historian and holding an executive position with the National Trust for Historic Preservation, Rael-Gálvez continued to gather information on this topic. As he examined baptism and census records from New Mexico, he recognized the broader importance of the information.

“Occasionally, individuals who knew I had this information would approach me and ask if I had any records of their Comanche ancestors,” he shared.

Launched in February 2022, Native Bound Unbound was made possible by funding from the Mellon Foundation, enabling Rael-Gálvez to establish a database and assemble a 75-member team of researchers, translators, and transcribers who have been diligently reviewing records from Alaska to Argentina, including documents from Europe.

These documents are being scanned and organized to ensure individual stories can be easily accessed within a single record – for instance, a person’s 18th-century baptismal record might be linked to a death certificate that records their tribal affiliation.

“We’ll be able to provide biographical details in many instances,” Rael-Gálvez stated. “This will include information about their children and relatives, where they resided.”

The archive will also incorporate artifacts, a timeline of Indigenous enslavement, and oral histories collected from descendants like Leyva.

Simultaneously, at Brown University’s Center for Digital Scholarship in Providence, Rhode Island, associate history professor Linford Fisher heads a separate yet comparable initiative called Stolen Relations: Recovering Stories of Indigenous Enslavement in the Americas.

This university-funded program, enhanced by a 2022 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, began within Fisher’s research pursuits for a book on Indigenous narratives.
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The forced labor of Indigenous peoples in the English colonies, especially in New England and along the Atlantic coast, has been a significant part of history.

The project website states, “The enslavement of Native Americans was a widespread issue across the continent, driven by all European colonial powers during their colonization of the Americas.”

Stolen Relations is being undertaken in partnership with various regional tribal nations and institutions like the Tomaquag Museum, an Indigenous museum located in Exeter, Rhode Island. According to Fisher, their contributions have influenced not just the language used in the project but its overall viewpoint.

“While traditional slavery studies often take the perspective of the enslavers, they have encouraged us to consider the perspective of what was taken away from the Indigenous peoples,” he remarked. “For me, that was a significant shift in understanding.”

Both Native Bound Unbound and Stolen Relations aim to launch by the summer of 2025.

“This isn’t just the work of one individual,” Fisher highlighted. “It’s a collective effort throughout the hemisphere. I feel enthusiastic that we have another initiative underway. This requires all our efforts to uncover the truth.”

The obstacles in revealing a hidden truth

Intertribal slavery existed even before Christopher Columbus arrived in the Americas. The practice escalated with the arrival of Spanish, Dutch, French, and Portuguese colonizers, eventually spreading across South and Central America, Mexico, the original 13 British colonies, and parts of what we now call the American Southwest.

Reséndez from UC-Davis notes that Native groups who enslaved their adversaries gained a foothold in the trade, particularly as they were able to acquire European arms and horses; tribes like the Ute and Comanche were significant sources of Indigenous slaves for both European settlers and other Native tribes.

However, uncovering details about those who were enslaved is quite challenging.

“The information is scattered and not centralized,” Fisher explained. “We have extensive shipping records for 12 million African slaves, but nothing comparable exists for Indigenous slavery. Often, it’s just one individual mentioned in a will or a handful of names in runaway slave advertisements.”

These difficulties are further complicated by the fact that slavery was illegal in many parts of the Americas, with the legality fluctuating between different empires. For example, while African slavery was legitimized by European powers from the 16th to the 19th centuries, Spain attempted to outlaw Indigenous slavery as early as 1542, according to Reséndez.

Despite this, the practice persisted as colonizers exploited loopholes like peonage and historical provisions that allowed for the detention of captives from wartime. By the late 17th century, Spanish authorities had issued additional orders and directives urging the liberation of Indigenous individuals still subjected to bondage.

“Spanish colonists and entrepreneurs… resorted to legal loopholes, created exceptions, and developed complex labor systems,” Reséndez noted. “This legal confusion enabled them to continue the exploitation of Native Americans, offering little to no compensation, which contributes to our ongoing struggle to recognize the true nature of colonial enslavement practices.”

Rael-Gálvez of Native Bound Unbound shared that many Indigenous women and children who were kidnapped were often labeled in records as maids or servants—terms he argues were just euphemisms for slavery.

“The law obscured the reality of the situation,” he said. “It was a tolerated illegal activity. Individuals were being ‘captured’ left and right.”

Documents discovered by Rael-Gálvez’s team, such as wills, show how these individuals, while not legally recognized as property, were nonetheless passed down through families. For instance, an 1859 will from J. Tomas de Abeyta, a priest in what was then the U.S. territory of New Mexico, detailed the transfer of a Paiute boy he had bought, stating, “I leave to my mother Maria Manuela a young Indian whom I bought from the Navajo tribe; he is named Juan de Jesús.”

“That is fundamentally chattel slavery,” Rael-Gálvez asserted.

Why Indigenous slavery has been neglected

Evidence suggests these practices persisted into the 20th century. For example, Rael-Gálvez mentioned that Navajo women who were captured in Colorado during the 1800s were still noted as living with the descendants of their original captors as late as the 1950s.

There are several reasons scholars believe this aspect of history has been largely ignored.

One key reason stems from the manner in which the United States was formed, expanding from east to west. By 1848, after Mexico ceded what is now the American Southwest to the U.S. post a two-year conflict, much of that history lay buried beneath centuries of silence.

“We’re not taught this history in American schools,” stated Rael-Gálvez. “We learn about the colonies and the migration westward, but the foundational history that came before is often erased.”

Fisher, involved in the Stolen Relations project, commented that as a result, Native Americans have been placed in a narrow historical narrative in the U.S., making it challenging to redefine those roles. Additionally, he noted that the practice of Indigenous slavery took place in the margins of societies that otherwise claimed to condemn it, presenting a difficult truth to confront.

“For English colonists who spent a century critiquing the Spaniards and then replicated those very acts upon arriving in the Americas, U.S. history is rife with contradictions between American ideals and actual practices,” he elaborated.

He added that the history of Indigenous enslavement is intertwined with subsequent destructive policies aimed at eradicating Native culture and identity, such as Indian boarding schools and forced adoptions, which carried on into the 1960s.

“Initially, boarding schools were focused heavily on labor, where many children were sent out to work in domestic settings,” Fisher explained. “This connects to a long-lasting process of cultural elimination. The term genocide has been used, and I do not disagree with that characterization.”

Both he and Rael-Gálvez express hope that their initiatives will serve researchers, educators, artists, and journalists, but the primary aim remains to provide clarity and insight for the descendants of those who were enslaved.

Rael-Gálvez stressed that Native Bound Unbound “is dedicated to honoring every individual who endured slavery. We aim to treat every piece of documentation with the utmost respect and to capture their stories in as much detail as possible.”

Fisher noted that the participation of contemporary tribal members, along with their firsthand accounts, ensures that the Stolen Relations project addresses both historical injustices and ongoing realities.

“It’s increasingly vital to highlight not only the injustices suffered but also how communities have risen above them,” he remarked. “For them, the colonial era isn’t seen as the past; it continues to resonate. They seek hope and a positive future… This serves as a platform for tribal members to assert their presence. It’s not merely a narrative of oppression and genocide, but also one of resilience.”

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