Turtle Talk

Paul Spruhan has posted “The Unfulfilled Liberation: The Navajo Nation, the Federal Government and the Legal History of Indian Slavery in the Reconstruction Southwest” on SSRN.

Here is the abstract:

The article discusses the legal history of enslavement of American Indians, particularly Navajos, in territorial New Mexico during the Civil War and Reconstruction. It focuses Indian slavery within the relationship between the Navajo Nation and the Federal Government from 1846 to 1877, spanning the federal occupation of New Mexico in the Mexican-American War to the end of Reconstruction. It discusses in detail the role of the Army, the Office of Indian Affairs, and Congress in declaring the legal emancipation of Navajos and other Indian slaves but failing in implementing true liberation. It also discusses the role of the slavery issue in the negotiations and implementation of the Navajo Treaty of 1868, and the failure of General William Tecumseh Sherman and other federal officials to liberate Navajo slaves after the execution of the Treaty and the return of Navajos to their homeland. The article concludes with a discussion of why the Federal government tolerated the continued existence of Navajo slavery despite the end of southern slavery, and its place in the longer arc of federal assimilation policies against Indian people.