• I Cast Fist@programming.dev
    1·
    3 months ago

    “I am not making any inquiries about you, because it takes a good person to make an offer as good as you did”

    If the stuff listed here is somewhat accurate, an Indian child was the equivalent of ~17 pounds of M&M candies, or two Ladies Corduroy Jackets

  • Cagi@lemmy.ca
    1·
    3 months ago

    And if you are rich enough they won’t even ask around if you’re a good person, because only good people buy children.

  • conditional_soup@lemm.ee
    1·
    3 months ago

    It was actually common after the fall of slavery to just go kidnap native American children and force them into slavery (but don’t call it that because slavery is illegal now). I’ve actually got a book I can quote on it if anyone’s interested, but it was a big part of the California native genocide specifically.

    • grue@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      3 months ago

      (but don’t call it that because slavery is illegal now)

      “Fun” fact: the 13th Amendment didn’t actually make slavery illegal. What it said was that “neither slavery nor involuntary servitude… shall exist” but it didn’t actually create any penalties for people engaging in it.

      There were a bunch of people in the late 19th and early 20th century who got criminally prosecuted for the crime of “debt peonage,” but got off because they claimed the alleged “peon” didn’t actually owe them a debt and that they were just straight-up enslaving them instead. That was a defense! That worked!!!

      Source: https://youtu.be/j4kI2h3iotA?t=3218

      By 1952 (the time of OP’s document) it was indeed, finally, properly illegal. But it had only become so a mere ten years earlier, and then only because the US government was worried about Japanese propagandists pointing out that the US was treating its minorities as brutally as the Japanese were treating the people in the territories it conquered (see later in the same video, starting at 1:06:26).

      So yeah, the point is that in many cases between 1865 and 1942, the lesson was: do call it slavery because then it becomes OK!