For most Americans of European descent "slavery" means the use of African peoples as forced laborers in plantation agriculture. In the European system slaves were property that could be bought or sold, and they had economic value. For Native American peoples it can mean something quite different: the native practice of holding war captives, the European practice of capturing or purchasing Indians for use in plantation agriculture, or the similar use of African Americans by southern Indians for their own farms and plantations. For most native North Americans in precontact America, there was no equivalent to the European practice of slavery. War captives served social rather than economic purposes. Deaths through torture served as revenge and an emotional release for their captors. Adopted captives, on the other hand, enabled a bereaved family to replace members who had died or been killed. An adoptee became...