“The controlling influences here are pro-slavery,” he griped, “and almost the whole of the American population is from the slave states.”126 Kephart’s experience epitomized the ongoing confusion among American outsiders relative to New Mexicans’ perspectives on the slavery issue. Whereas Hugh Smith and Richard Weightman—both of whom represented the territory in Congress—swore that Hispanos disavowed the peculiar institution in both practice and principle, Kephart believed the entire population to be wedded to the Southern proslavery cause.
Congressional deliberations over slavery in the territories lasted for the better part of two years, commencing with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in February 1848 and culminating on September 9, 1850, with the passage of the congressional compromise accord. The brainchild of an aging but determined Henry Clay, the conciliatory legislation temporarily assuaged both pro-and antislavery factions but also laid the groundwork for the impending political conflagration of the 1850s.127 It allowed for the admittance of California as a free-soil state and for Utah and New Mexico to be appended as territories under the premise of popular sovereignty, granting residents the ability to decide for themselves on the slavery issue. Clay’s efforts brought temporary closure to some of the most heated sectional debates the nation had yet seen, averting Southern secession for another decade.
These discussions at the national level almost exclusively addressed chattel slavery, which scarcely existed in New Mexico and, many argued, could never be profitably implemented there. Debt peonage and Indian slavery, long entrenched in southwestern culture, had become a mainstay of everyday life just as black slavery was an omnipresent characteristic of the South. Congressional leaders neglected to account for the disparities in these systems of servitude when formulating policy objectives. On one telling occasion, during a Senate debate over the 1850 compromise measure, an amendment sought to include a provision “that peon slavery [be] forever abolished and prohibited” in the territories. Many legislators scoffed at the proposal, with one senator standing and proclaiming sarcastically, “I move to amend that amendment by striking out the word ‘peon,’” a quip that instigated laughter throughout the chamber. Senator Benton retorted by pronouncing the amendment to be worthy of consideration. In place of the word “slavery,” he suggested that the more all-encompassing term “servitude” be substituted.128 Another senator thought that “this peonage … was servitude existing by virtue of the contract of the individuals … [and] by the recognized law of that country,” meaning that Congress had no right to interfere.129 The entire debate on peonage versus slavery ultimately failed to provide any meaningful solutions, with many senators believing that Congress lacked the power to legislate on slavery in the territories. In this, one gets a sense of the general ambivalence toward Hispanic peons and Indian captives. Many officials either neglected or refused to recognize such persons as involuntary servants and thus avoided legislating on what they perceived to be a nonissue.
In the years immediately following the Mexican-American War, congressional discourse on slavery in the Southwest had little direct impact on preexisting systems of bondage. Nor, for that matter, did the Compromise of 1850 satisfactorily resolve the issues that arose concerning the extension of chattel slavery into New Mexico. The debates did lay the rhetorical groundwork for future Reconstruction policymakers seeking to expand the Thirteenth Amendment to encompass peonage and captivity, because antebellum political arguments developed precedents that helped to define and even expand the free labor ideology of postwar legislators and reformers. Within the context of prewar sectionalism, however, more than two years of deliberation on slavery within the Mexican Cession lands revealed the indecisiveness of federal lawmakers on such issues, and their indeterminacy culminated in the Civil War a decade later. The debate carried on and, ultimately, the territorial legislature passed laws throughout the 1850s that would have more immediate consequences for the nature of debt peonage and Indian slavery, while simultaneously placing New Mexico firmly within the camp of the Southern cause. In the meantime, as more and more Americans traveled to and settled in New Mexico after 1850, the nation would gradually become more familiar with the nature of debt peonage and Indian captivity.
Chapter 2
Indian Slavery Meets American Sovereignty
In 1867, under the direction of Republican James R. Doolittle of Wisconsin, a Senate special committee released a voluminous 532-page report outlining the “condition of the Indian tribes” occupying America’s western domain.1 Impelled by widespread accusations alleging mistreatment of indigenous peoples all across the continent, the published testimonial initiated a period of restructuring in approaches to Indian affairs. With moral reformers demanding modified federal Indian policies and the “Doolittle report” (as it has come to be known) substantiating previous allegations of abusive conduct, officials felt pressured to pursue corrective action. Under the political leadership of Republicans and the moral guidance of religious activists, this far-reaching movement promulgated the liberation of many debt peons and Indian captives in the Southwest Borderlands, a vast area that included New Mexico, Arizona, southern Utah and Colorado, and the trans-Pecos part of Texas. It also prompted federal investigations to ensure compliance on the part of regional servantholders.2
The 1867 report, which included the sworn testimony of several prominent New Mexico citizens and bureaucrats, revealed a grim portrait of circumstances in that region, one where systems of human bondage persevered and prospered even after the Civil War’s culmination brought about the manumission of African American slaves. The informants—including Brigadier General James H. Carleton, Judge Kirby Benedict, ex-governor Henry Connelly, former Superintendent of Indian Affairs James L. Collins, and famed frontiersman Kit Carson—concurred in one thing if nothing else: Forms of coercive labor remained firmly implanted in the Southwest at that time.
Carleton’s testimony set the tone for what lay ahead. “The number of Indians, men, women, and children, who have been captured or bought from the Utes, and who live in the families in the Territory,” he told investigators, “may be safely set down as at least three thousand.” Implicitly describing the cultural and filial dependency that this fostered, he noted that many of these captives learned to speak Spanish and “become attached to the families they live in.” Carleton also acknowledged that New Mexicans frequently rode into Navajo country, where they “capture some of the women and children and make slaves of them.” He spoke of only two tribes—the Utes and Navajos—while neglecting to mention the roles of Apaches, Comanches, or other groups who acted with similar complicity in the captive slave network.3
Judge Benedict took the stand next. Nearly a decade earlier, in a case that had legal implications into the early twentieth century, this official from Illinois had established himself as the face of antislavery judicial activism in New Mexico by ruling in favor of a peon in an 1857 lawsuit. “There are in the Territory a large number of Indians, principally females (women and children), who have been taken by force, or stealth, or purchased,” Benedict explained. “It is notorious that natives [Hispanos] of this country have sometimes made captives of Navajo women and children when opportunities presented themselves; the custom has long existed here of buying Indian persons, especially women and children; the tribes themselves have carried on this kind of traffic.” Lest his intended audience misunderstand any of his testimony, he concluded by bluntly telling them that “the Indian persons obtained in any one of the modes mentioned are treated by those who claim to own them as their servants and slaves.” Once again, however, the informant alluded only to a solitary tribe—this time the Navajos.4
Connelly, following the lead of Carleton and Benedict, seemed merely to reiterate what his colleagues had already made quite clear. Describing relations between Navajos and New Mexicans, he noted that “they mutually also captured and held as slaves the women and children of each other,” explaining that reciprocal slave raiding “had existed since time immemorial.”5 James L. Collins, who developed a deep knowledge of slaving practices during
