Over the course of the eighteenth century, Apache Indians from Southwestern America could be found laboring in Montreal or Natchitoches, Mexico City or Havana. Some had been transported by Native traders hundreds of miles before being sold as slaves. Others were exiled prisoners of war that Spanish officials distributed to citizens who promised to educate and Christianize them. This presentation will trace the fates of Apaches sent away from Southwestern America in order to consider what captives’ experiences reveal about race and slavery in distinct regions of eighteenth century North America. It will also explore what the frequent displacement of men, women, and children meant for life in the Southwest during this period. While Natives and Euroamericans often took captives and incorporated or exchanged them locally, the threat of being "sent away" also became a recognized and feared fate for Apaches and others during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Apache communities responded to the persistent threat of capture, enslavement, or displacement by honing strategies of mobility and violence with which Anglo-Americans would become intimately familiar in the nineteenth century.

Paul is this year's recipient of the David J. Weber Research Fellowship.  After receiving his PhD from the University of Texas, he joined the history faculty at Colorado State University at Pueblo.  During his year at the Clements Center, Paul will revise his manuscript for publication.  Paul will also be a participant in this year's Clements Center symposium, "Uniting the Histories of Slavery," co-sponsored with the School for Advanced Research.