Cambridge World History of Slavery · ch. 9 · Leland Donald
Slavery & Slave Integration in Indigenous North America
All 172 WNAI (Jorgensen 1980) societies + 21 peoples Donald discusses that are absent from WNAI. Two codings per point: dataset vs chapter.
Find a society
Matches names, Donald’s groupings, WNAI language groups, culture areas and the
dataset’s alternate spellings — try Paipai, Lemhi, Haida or Plateau.
↑↓ to move, ↵ to open, Esc to close.
Colour points by
Slavery status WNAI
Slavery status Donald
Mentioned by Donald?
Donald group outlines
Dashed loops surround the WNAI societies Donald treats as one group (all Apache, all Pueblos, the Haida / Tlingit / Tsimshian, and so on). Hover a loop for its name; single-society groups have no loop.
Modern reference
Present-day international and state / province boundaries with place names, drawn over the basemap so the historical points are easier to locate. They are a modern reference only — no boundary here corresponds to anything in the 1980 dataset or in Donald’s chapter. Also switchable in the layer box at the top right.
Language-neighbour groups
Click a group to zoom to it. The 172 WNAI societies only — the 21 peoples outside the sample have no group.
The WNAI language-neighbour grouping used by Towner et al. (2012), not a genealogical
classification: it is built from who borders whom, and it files Klamath and Modoc under Sahaptian. Language isolates in the sample get no group.
Data sources
Two independent readings.WNAI = the D-PLACE "Western Indians" dataset (Jorgensen 1980): ethnographic coding of slave-holding, slave-raiding and captive integration for all 172 sampled western societies — reproduced here directly from the dataset, and checked against it point by point. Donald = values read from the chapter's prose, available only for peoples Donald actually discusses and for the 21 non-WNAI peoples. Toggle to colour by either; open a point to see both side by side. A society with no value under the active colouring shows as a hollow marker.
Evidence rule. The chapter is the only source for the Donald column and for every description. Where Donald names a people directly, the popup says so; where a value is an inference from a named group or from a culture-area generalisation, the description says which, and cells the chapter does not speak to are left Unknown or Not stated rather than guessed. Encyclopedia and dataset links are supplied for identification only — no claim on this map rests on them.
Reading the map
A geographic gradient. The Northwest Coast core practised hereditary chattel slavery, little integration (blue) with active slave-raiding; a Plateau / NW-California / Southwest periphery held captives who could be adopted or naturalized (yellow); the interior Great Basin and most Pueblos show no institutionalised slavery (grey).
Coverage & markers. WNAI covers only western North America. Eastern Woodlands, Plains, Arctic and Yukon peoples Donald discusses are dashed orange markers at approximate homelands. Societies Donald never discusses appear as small grey-ringed dots (WNAI data only). Aleut, Pacific Eskimo & Tutchone lie far NW / N of the usual window — pan out.
Hover a point for its name; click for both codings and Donald's account. A point can carry several Donald descriptions \u2014 the specific mention, the named group or trade network, and the regional culture-area \u2014 each tagged by level.