The ownership of enslaved people by Indigenous peoples of the Americas extended throughout the colonial period up to the abolition of slavery. Indigenous people enslaved Amerindians, Africans, and occasionally Europeans.
In North America, waves of European colonization brought Amerindian dislocation and modern weapons which enabled the industrialization of Amerindian slave-raiding of Amerindians for about a century. Soon afterwards, as an accelerating Atlantic slave trade brought enslaved Africans to North America, many indigenous tribes acquired more Africans as slaves and traded them among themselves and to the colonists. Many prominent people from the "Five Civilized Tribes" purchased slaves and became members of the planter class. A number of Indian nations of the time are considered "slave societies", comparable to the canonical models of Greece, Rome, Portuguese America, and others.
