Local professor’s article about native forced labor in California published

Mike Magliari also an expert on history of John Bidwell

Ask people what comes to mind upon mentioning the concept of “slavery” and most would undoubtedly think of the bondage of people of African ancestry in the Southern United States.

However, a research article by Chico State Professor Mike Magliari called “‘A Species of Slavery’: The Compromise of 1850, Popular Sovereignty, and the Expansion of Unfree Indian Labor in the American West,” highlights the fairly obscure issue of Native Americans within the new state of California, plus the territories of Utah and New Mexico.

Magliari’s article appeared in the December 2022 edition of the quarterly Journal of American History. Magliari is a specialist in the history of John Bidwell, teaming with Mike Gillis to write “John Bidwell and California: The Life and Writings of a Pioneer, 1841-1900.”

The recently published piece focuses on what Magliari described Tuesday as “a very little-known subject among the general public. It’s kind of an exciting recent development among American historians — especially compared to the scope of other forms of unfree labor.” He listed the standard North-vs.South, White-vs.-Black (in terms of racial divisions) and the polar opposites of unfree labor and chattel slavery.

The key, Magliari said, is that the United States Congress had an opportunity to decisively abolish slavery — and, indeed, any kind of unfree labor — at the time of the Compromise of 1850. Instead, Congress admitted California as a “free” state, while setting up territorial governments in New Mexico and Utah, without restrictions on whether any future states established in those territories would be free or slave.

“This was a carryover from earlier Spanish colonial laws, which Mexico inherited,” Magliari explained. “When the U.S. conquered the Southwest, the exploitation of unfree native labor was inherited by the U.S.”

It was a pivotal decision and, of course, had direct influence on what became the Civil War of 1861-65.

“The U.S. declined the opportunity to abolish this practice” — referring to unfree labor — “but instead let it continue, and under U.S. rule was expanded and elaborated,” Magliari said.

During the 1850s and early 1860s, white American lawmakers in all three places passed elaborate laws to allow white employers to bind unfree laborers, by way of indentured servitude, convict lease and debt peonage.

“Lawmakers also continued the tradition of war captives, at least in New Mexico, where it remained legal to keep captives of native wars — the spoils of war,” Magliari said.

Read Magliari’s article at https://bit.ly/3Jm4L3S.