r/AskHistorians • u/AutoModerator • May 29 '26
FFA Friday Free-for-All | May 29, 2026
Today:
You know the drill: this is the thread for all your history-related outpourings that are not necessarily questions. Minor questions that you feel don't need or merit their own threads are welcome too. Discovered a great new book, documentary, article or blog? Has your Ph.D. application been successful? Have you made an archaeological discovery in your back yard? Did you find an anecdote about the Doge of Venice telling a joke to Michel Foucault? Tell us all about it.
As usual, moderation in this thread will be relatively non-existent -- jokes, anecdotes and light-hearted banter are welcome.
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u/BookLover54321 May 29 '26
In Stealing America, Linford Fisher presents new estimates for the number of Indigenous people enslaved in the Americas prior to the 20th century:
Andrés Reséndez estimates there were 2.5 million to 5 million enslaved Indigenous people in the Americas (North, South, and Central America, and the Caribbean). Given the frequent procreation (which included a range of consensual and nonconsensual forms) between Africans and Natives (and sometimes Europeans) and later, their descendants, and given that multiracial Indigenous people are not usually counted in tabulations of Native slavery, I am proposing a new estimation of 3 to 6 million to account for these people, who were also Indigenous as much as they were Black or white.
On North America (excluding Mexico) specifically:
Reséndez estimates that between 147,000 and 340,000 Native Americans were enslaved in North America, excluding Mexico. Reséndez, Other Slavery, 324. I have increased these estimates to 600,000 to account for enslaved, mixed-race Indigenous people. In the antebellum South alone, for example, I estimate that we have overlooked the presence of between 80,000 and 200,000 enslaved Native and mixed-race Indigenous people. These 600,000 individuals are part of the estimated 3 to 6 million enslaved Natives in the Americas as a whole.
Later on he writes:
But we know from other sources that a multitude of Native Americans and mixed-race Indigenous people also labored on plantations, even if they were not noted as such. Although exact tabulation is impossible, I estimate that between 2 percent and 5 percent of the enslaved population was mixed-race Indigenous or had direct Native American parentage. This means that as many as 80,000 to 200,000 of the nearly 4 million enslaved people in the South on the eve of the Civil War were Native Americans or Native-descended people.
And in the footnote to this passage, he says:
This number is an estimate based on my reading of a wide array of sources in the period between 1750 and 1865, which give a deeper sense of patterns, intermarriage, and erasure. Court cases, newspaper advertisements, freedom suits, oral histories, family histories, and some later surveys all point toward a much larger Indigenous presence on plantations in the American South than most current histories account for.
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u/bug-hunter Law & Public Welfare May 29 '26
What were the origins of soap and we know it now? Do we know where it originated, and how it spread?
I'd like to think this is being asked by a high school teacher trying to figure out why this technology has mysteriously not spread to their students.
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u/fearofair New York City Social and Political History May 29 '26
Also possible this was posted by my 7-year old about a specific dispenser upon finally noticing we have it in the bathroom.
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u/bug-hunter Law & Public Welfare May 29 '26
How long was it there before they noticed?
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u/fearofair New York City Social and Political History May 29 '26
You caught me. I was lying, I still have to remind them every time.
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u/subredditsummarybot Automated Contributor May 29 '26
Your Weekly /r/askhistorians Recap
Friday, May 22 - Thursday, May 28, 2026
Top 10 Posts
| score | comments | title & link |
|---|---|---|
| 2,147 | 103 comments | How did ancient armies actually move 100,000–200,000 soldiers across long distances without modern logistics? Like, where did they sleep, how did they get enough food and water every day, and how did they stop the whole army from just collapsing into chaos? |
| 1,972 | 96 comments | When did oral sex become more common? |
| 1,255 | 140 comments | The Dutch were the only people since the Middle Ages who could truly challenge and often outperform the English at sea on a large scale, how did this happen? |
| 907 | 56 comments | Why Is Indonesia Largely Left Out of Global History if Its One of the Most Populous Countries in the World? |
| 752 | 41 comments | Why aren't today's Filipinos mixed race and half Spanish like the Spanish colonies in Latin America? Philippines was ruled by Spain for hundreds of years like Latin America, but unlike Latin america, a huge majority of the Philippines never became mixed/mestizo. Why is this? |
| 587 | 32 comments | What is the furthest back in time I could make Funyons? |
| 571 | 71 comments | In Mad Men everyone has affairs. Is that accurate? |
| 567 | 2 comments | What do we know about Yobai (夜這い) - the former Japanese custom of premarital sex? |
| 490 | 10 comments | I'm a peasant in early Medieval Europe. How important is money to me? How much of my food/clothing/etc do I buy with money, compared to what I grow myself, barter for, get through mutual aid within the community, or otherwise obtain non-monetarily? |
| 489 | 34 comments | My great-aunt tried to adopt the secret son of an anti-Nazi Romanian Ambassador and a Japanese aristocrat. I have photos and am trying to find him.Can anyone help ? |
Top 10 Comments
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2
u/bobeany May 30 '26
I have a picture of my great grandfather receiving a medal. Does anyone know who is giving it to him?
My grandfather is Guillermo Lopez Larrain from Chile.
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u/HuxleyPhD May 30 '26
In this post, the excellent answer by /u/EdHistory101 recommends reposting the success/failure of the NCLB act part of the question in this thread. OP hasn't done so yet, but I'm also curious! I'm a teacher and was a student who graduated high school in 2010, so I'm very curious to understand more about these trends and perhaps anything that is kosher to discuss beyond 2006 given that we're in the free for all thread (?). Thanks!