Defying Indian Slavery: Apalachee Voices and Spanish Sources in the Eighteenth-Century Southeast

Abstract

Apalachee Indians endured some of the most devastating slave raids in the eighteenth century. Their enslavement is a central feature of the story of southeastern Indian slavery. Although scholars have noted the many ways Native peoples negotiated the slave trade, Apalachees appear in these discussions mostly as casualties of an inexorable colonial force. This article employs NAIS methodologies to reframe Apalachee history during Indian slavery. Using a single document, a letter written on June 10, 1704, by Deputy Manuel Solana to Florida's governor, José de Zúñiga y Cerda, it forges a narrative with and about Apalachee voices and repositions Apalachees in the story of Indian slavery in ways that are neither teleological nor rooted in decline. A NAIS approach also opens up a larger question: How can historians write about moments of horrific loss without allowing the loss to define the totality of the experience or end the story? How can we write about damage without writing "damage narratives"? Privileging Apalachee epistemologies, futures, and contingencies within an article focused on an archival and colonial source allows for the exploration of both the materials available and the methods required to write ethical indigenous histories.

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