Indian slavery in colonial times within the present limits of the United States

Almon Wheeler Lauber's Indian slavery in colonial times within the present limits of the United States is a pioneering historical study of the enslavement and coerced labor of Native peoples from the colonial era through the early national period. Written in an early twentieth-century scholarly style, the book is documentary, analytical, and firmly grounded in legal records, colonial statutes, missionary reports, and administrative correspondence. Lauber situates Indian slavery within the wider structures of European colonization, frontier warfare, commerce, and imperial governance, revealing a system too often overshadowed by studies of African slavery. Lauber was an American historian whose academic training inclined him toward institutional and archival history, and this work reflects that method. Writing at a time when professional historians were consolidating the documentary study of American colonial society, he sought to recover a neglected dimension of bondage within the present boundaries of the United States. His interest appears shaped by the Progressive Era's concern with social institutions and by the expanding use of state and colonial archives. This book is especially recommended to readers of colonial American history, Indigenous history, and the comparative study of slavery. Though marked by the conventions of its period, it remains valuable for its breadth, evidentiary rigor, and lasting contribution to understanding the violence and complexity of early American society.