author
Almon Wheeler Lauber
1880–1944
Best known for a pioneering 1913 study of Native American slavery in colonial America, this early 20th-century historian focused on a part of U.S. history that had often been overlooked. His work is still cited by readers and researchers interested in slavery, colonial law, and Indigenous history.
1 Audiobook
Indian slavery in colonial times within the present limits of the United States
by Almon Wheeler Lauber
About the author
Almon Wheeler Lauber was an American historian born in 1880 and remembered chiefly for Indian Slavery in Colonial Times within the Present Limits of the United States, published in 1913. The book grew out of his doctoral work at Columbia University and set out to document the enslavement of Native Americans under Spanish, French, and especially English colonial systems.
In the preface to that study, Lauber thanked Columbia historian William R. Shepherd for guiding the research, which suggests the book was closely tied to his graduate scholarship. Later notices also identify him as having worked as an assistant in the office of the New York state historian, linking him to archival and documentary history as well as academic research.
Reliable biographical detail about his personal life is limited in the sources readily available online, so he is known today mainly through his writing. Even so, his major book remains notable for drawing attention to a neglected subject and for gathering laws, records, and examples that helped later historians continue the conversation.