Indian slave trade in the Southwest

by Lynn Robison Bailey

With the Spanish entrada into the arid Southwest came the seeds of a commerce that would germinate and grow into a menace to be felt for over 300 years-- the trade in Indian slaves and captives. Unable to control and Christianize the less sedentary tribes, such as the Apaches, Utes, Paiutes, and Navajos, the early Spanish settlers sought instead to subjugate them by a systematic program of bondage. Into the mines of northern Mexico and to the estates of the landed gentry of New Mexico went thousands of Indians, to spend their lives in hopeless toil. With inevitable vengeance the Indians turned against the newcomers. For five hundred miles into Mexico, Apaches and Comanche warriors cut a path of destruction. In New Mexico the Navajos stubbornly fought against Spanish encroachment; and successfully restricted the course of westward expansion and, with the advent of the reciprocal trade in captives and slaves-- both Red and White-- came seemingly endless decades of frontier warfare and po