An Afro-Indigenous History of the United States

and sustained the empire of cotton directly underwrote the dispossession of
native peoples in the south.” 11 Though other forms of exploitation have
occurred since the original dispossession and enslavement, such as the evergrowing
US military industrial complex, which has emerged in nearly every
part of the world, these two structures, together, formed modern capitalism.
Moreover, the other slavery—the enslavement of Indigenous peoples—was
also a central part of the United States’ development. In historian Andrés
Reséndez’s award-winning book, The Other Slavery (2016), he argues that
Europeans enslaved between 2.5 million to 5 million Indigenous peoples. 12
Although Indigenous enslavement did not measure in scale to African
enslavement, as Reséndez argues, it shared with the other system at least
four features: “forcible removal of the victims from one place to another,
inability to leave the workplace, violence or threat of violence to compel
them to work, and nominal or no pay.” 13 This set of facts should allow us to
trouble the simple distinction that “Africans were enslaved and Indians
either died off or were dispossessed and confined to reservations.” 14 History
is much more complicated, and it is crucial to think further about how these
histories interact.
However, it is tempting to focus almost solely on how Black and
Indigenous peoples collaborated to resist European domination—such as
the founding of Maroon communities. This is romantic at best, and ignores
the fact that these two groups were not natural allies. Maroon communities
were a group of Africans who escaped enslavement, and often found ways
to resist being recaptured by living with one another out of plain sight.
Perhaps the most well-known Maroon community in the US was a group of
Africans who escaped slavery and lived with the Seminoles.
Yet, it is important not to romanticize these relationships. For instance,
even the telling of Bacon’s Rebellion in 1676 reveals a different history. Let
me offer a brief history. William Berkeley, the governor of the Virginia
Colony, denied Nathaniel Bacon the authority to lead soldiers to kill and
murder Native Americans in Virginia so that they could occupy land.
Bacon, who got caught up in his feelings, decided to take his soldiers and
challenge the authority of Berkeley and attack the “enemies,” who were the
Susquehannock. Bacon and his henchmen attacked the Susquehannock,
then they burned down Jamestown. They drove Berkeley back to England,
and halted tobacco production for a year. The traditional narrative suggests
that the rebellion that occurred in Jamestown was a moment of class