Quote Originally Posted by hfahrenheit View Post
Quote Originally Posted by CFH View Post
Quote Originally Posted by hfahrenheit View Post

Yeah, I didn't mean to sound like I assigned any humanity to their treatment, because I don't. But, it doesn't matter what details you bring, i.e. killing, mutilating, etc... it's all been done before (and currently happening in Sudan and Indonesia), and nothing that was done to them was unique. Perhaps "best treated" is the wrong way of putting it, what I really mean to say is that they had the best standard of living of any slaves in history, not because of any good will on part of their captors, but just because of the time period.

To your point about Natives, you're partially correct. Natives primarily would kill the men and take the women and children into their societies- that's actually assimilation. Google Mary Rowlandson.

Even with the Jews, who are the most picked on ethnic group in history, the phrase, "there's nothing new under the sun" applies. Genocide, medical testing, killing of first born children, you name it, it's all happened before to every race of people.
There was no universal treatment of slaves by "Natives", there are many different entities with their own customs etc. I'd like to read that book by Rowlandson, but I view most things written by whites about Natives with intense skepticism.
You're right- "There was no universal treatment of slaves by "Natives"", because they didn't keep slaves. They killed the men, and assimilated the women and children into their societies. But even that's not universal; the story of Mary Rowlandson is from the puritan era in Massachusetts area. She was captured by them and made a wife and what's funny is she progressively starts to enjoy it. It's believed that most people in this area and era who joined Native societies (forced or not) actually preferred them to their own white societies. It's sort of a boring read (I had to read it in American Lit I) but some interesting things come out of it.

Reinforcing your point, Aztec's most certainly kept slaves and treated them just as bad as the rest of the humans.
By Natives, I was referring to those who lived in what is now America and Canada, I should've been clear about that.

My point was that you can't make a statement regarding all Natives, as they and their societies were as distinct and separate as those dispersed over a comparable area. Saying all Natives killed the men and assimilated their women and children is erroneous. Some groups did, no doubt, but not all.

I know for a fact that Natives on the NW coast kept male slaves. Leaders captured them from one another. The NW coast peoples actually treated their slaves relatively well, here's a quote about it -

"Slaves, who were usually purchased or captured in war, made up a substantial part of the population. Although they had to perform menial tasks, their lives were not greatly different from commoners. However, they were considered chattel and could be sold, given away at potlatches, or killed by a high-ranking chief to demonstrate indifference to his great wealth."

The Haida were specifically noted as fierce warriors and slave raiders, nowhere have I read that they killed the men and only enslaved women and children.

I've read that females were preferred because they posed less of a risk than males, but it was common for males to be enslaved as well.

Some groups in what is now the British Columbia Plateau often captured female slaves though, integrating their children into their societies as you describe.