Page "Native Americans in the United States" Paragraph 161

When Europeans arrived as colonists in North America, Native Americans changed their practice of slavery dramatically.

Native Americans began selling war captives to whites rather than integrating them into their own societies as they had done before.

As the demand for labor in the West Indies grew with the cultivation of sugar cane, Europeans enslaved Native Americans for the Thirteen Colonies, and some were exported to the " sugar islands.

" The British settlers, especially those in the southern colonies, purchased or captured Native Americans to use as forced labor in cultivating tobacco, rice, and indigo.

Accurate records of the numbers enslaved do not exist.

Scholars estimate tens of thousands of Native Americans may have been enslaved by the Europeans, being sold by Native Americans themselves.