In this groundbreaking new history, Caroline Dodds Pennock recovers the long-marginalised stories of the Indigenous …
As ‘vassals’ of the Crown,* Indigenous people were theoretically protected from arbitrary enslavement, just as any Spanish citizen would be, but there were three important exceptions to the royal prohibition on slavery in the early years of colonisation. Indigenous people could be enslaved if they were ‘cannibals’; had been captured in a ‘just war’; or, as mentioned earlier, if they were subject to rescate (‘ransom’ from a worse fate, like human sacrifice, or being enslaved to a non-Christian). Significantly, also, only those from Spanish territories were protected by their ‘vassal’ status, meaning that anyone from beyond their borders (or whom the slaver claimed was from elsewhere) could be enslaved. These loopholes in the law meant that the debate over the subjection of Indigenous peoples was mainly focused not on whether slavery was wrong, but in what circumstances people had been, or could be, legally enslaved.