Greetings, and thanks for visiting this site. The idea for a database that centralizes all known biographical information about known instances of indigenous slavery in the Americas has been percolating for some time. In 2015 I began to slowly apply for small amounts of funding internally here at Brown to take the first steps towards amassing data and building a website. I’m grateful that the Center for Digital Scholarship here at Brown has been willing to generously help out in terms of computer programming and tech support. We have applied for significant outside funding both internally and externally and hope to be able to make more concrete headway soon.
At the moment, we do have a core database and a back-end interface for us to enter data. Although there is not yet a front-facing portal to the database, we are hoping to have a prototype of that by early 2018, especially if funding comes through.
In the meantime, I’d welcome any and all submissions to the project! If you have any instances of indigenous slavery anywhere in the Americas, in any linguistic context, please contact me! We have researchers who can enter this information into the database.
This will a great resource. I look forward to your reading your research. There are many historical records of indigenous persons being taken from North America to the Caribbean, Yucatán to Cuba & Puerto Rico, Dutch Antilles to Puerto Rico and so on. I would like to share with you a great read on this topic: “The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America” by Andrés Reséndez.
Thanks for your comment. I agree that this is a monumental task that will require a lot of work and collaboration. Reséndez’s book is terrific — I read it when it came out. Thanks again!