About this item
Slavery existed in North America long before the first Africans arrived at Jamestown in 1619. For centuries, from the pre-Columbian era through the 1840s, Native Americans took prisoners of war and killed, adopted, or enslaved them. Christina Snyders pathbreaking book takes a familiar setting for bondage, the American South, and places Native Americans at the center of her engrossing story. Indian warriors captured a wide range of enemies, including Africans, Europeans, and other Indians. Yet until the late eighteenth century, age and gender more than race affected the fate of captives. As economic and political crises mounted, however, Indians began to racialize slavery and target African Americans. Native people struggling to secure a separate space for themselves in America developed a shared language of race with white settlers.
About the Author
Christina Snyder is the McCabe Greer Professor of History at Penn State University. After earning her A.B. at the University of Georgia, she completed her Ph.D. at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Snyder also held the Barra Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania's McNeil Center for Early American Studies. Professor Snyder's ongoing research explores race, slavery, and the intersection of Native American and Southern history.
