• Cagi@lemmy.ca
    53·
    5 months ago

    And if you are rich enough they won’t even ask around if you’re a good person, because only good people buy children.

  • I Cast Fist
    50·
    5 months ago

    “I am not making any inquiries about you, because it takes a good person to make an offer as good as you did”

    If the stuff listed here is somewhat accurate, an Indian child was the equivalent of ~17 pounds of M&M candies, or two Ladies Corduroy Jackets

  • conditional_soup@lemm.ee
    37·
    5 months ago

    It was actually common after the fall of slavery to just go kidnap native American children and force them into slavery (but don’t call it that because slavery is illegal now). I’ve actually got a book I can quote on it if anyone’s interested, but it was a big part of the California native genocide specifically.

    • TexasDrunk@lemmy.world
      12·
      5 months ago

      The whitewashed story: My buddy’s great-grandmother was a native “servant”. There’s evidence that his great aunt was the product of her “boss” “having an affair” with her. This would have been just after the great depression.

      His grandfather’s father was also a native servant who died mysteriously right before my buddy’s grandfather was born. Seven years later, while working for the same people, he got a little sister and his mom died mysteriously right after. So they lived with my buddy’s great great grandmother while his grandfather worked this guy’s land and couldn’t get education. When great great grandmother died, grandfather was 12 or 13. He took his little sister to Texas to work in the oil fields and take care of her.

      He came and spoke to our class in 4th grade during a native American module in history class and told part of the story. I didn’t get to hear the rest until we were well into our teens. As an adult we started putting shit together and my buddy took a bunch of trips to Alabama to try to get everything else. He got the story corroborated by some older folks that were related to them and that’s where he found out some of the stories about his great aunt.

    • grue@lemmy.worldEnglish
      71·
      5 months ago

      (but don’t call it that because slavery is illegal now)

      “Fun” fact: the 13th Amendment didn’t actually make slavery illegal. What it said was that “neither slavery nor involuntary servitude… shall exist” but it didn’t actually create any penalties for people engaging in it.

      There were a bunch of people in the late 19th and early 20th century who got criminally prosecuted for the crime of “debt peonage,” but got off because they claimed the alleged “peon” didn’t actually owe them a debt and that they were just straight-up enslaving them instead. That was a defense! That worked!!!

      Source: https://youtu.be/j4kI2h3iotA?t=3218

      By 1952 (the time of OP’s document) it was indeed, finally, properly illegal. But it had only become so a mere ten years earlier, and then only because the US government was worried about Japanese propagandists pointing out that the US was treating its minorities as brutally as the Japanese were treating the people in the territories it conquered (see later in the same video, starting at 1:06:26).

      So yeah, the point is that in many cases between 1865 and 1942, the lesson was: do call it slavery because then it becomes OK!