Enslavement of Indigenous people marked Spanish exploration from 1539 onward

Evidence

When Hernando de Soto came ashore in present-day Tampa, Florida, in 1539, intent on finding riches for the Spanish Crown, in addition to a contingent of 625 soldiers and 250 horses, he brought enslaved people. He also carried iron restraints for locking up Indigenous people he hoped to seize. De Soto and his men marched from coastal Florida through the inner reaches of Georgia and Carolina, attacking Native villages, raiding their food supplies, ransacking their dwellings in search of gold and silver, and capturing some of the inhabitants. … In present-day South Carolina, de Soto’s party met a woman chieftain of the domain of Cofitachequi. Struck by her stately appearance—she was borne aloft in a sedan chair carried by several men—de Soto seized two hundred pounds of pearls and deerskins from her temple and then kidnapped her. Just beyond the borders of her domain, this captive, known in the historical record as the Lady of Cofitachequi, escaped with a cache of her precious pearls. Later, Spanish deserters reported that they had seen the Lady of Cofitachequi living as a spouse with a “Spanish slave” who had also escaped. This person was almost certainly of African descent. — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 469

Categorization

• XREF: The Lady of Cofitachequi episode parallels the Cabeza de Vaca and other Spanish-contact narratives of Indigenous captivity and escape; connects to broader genre of colonial encounter literature. — connects to: Spanish mining law declared natives owners while they were worked to death — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 337