Redemptioners

The redemptioner system appeared in the early decades of the 18th century, a variation of indentured servitude. It started as a means for German families to immigrate to the colonies but was used extensively by British immigrants, primarily Irish, traveling to PENNSYLVANIA. The system differed in significant ways from indentured servitude. Servants typically traveled to the colonies alone and exchanged the costs of their transportation for a period of labor service. While not all contracts were negotiated before embarking for the New World, most servants signed their indentures before their journey. Redemptioners immigrated more often in family units and typically paid some portion of the costs for travel to the colonies. Ship captains or merchants took whatever money they had, shipped the family members to the colonies, and, upon arrival in the New World, gave the passengers a specified amount of time to “redeem” the balance of payment. The fortunate ones could locate relatives or friends who would pay off the remaining debt.

By the mid-18th century it became increasingly difficult for immigrants to count on family and friends to redeem the cost of their passage. When the ship docked in the port, redemptioners began a frantic search to procure funds. In the early part of the century, when ships remained in port for long periods of time, immigrants might have as much as a month to make the necessary contacts to help pay the debt. Eventually, they were limited by law to 14 days. If they could not raise the balance, they were indentured to whomever would pay the amount necessary to satisfy the debt. The master paid the captain the cost, and the redemptioner served out the time until the debt was satisfied.

At times the process functioned smoothly. Lists of servants indentured to Philadelphia masters reveal that redemptioners secured places within a week or two. For others, however, the search was frustrating. Announcements in the Philadelphia newspaper threatened that if redemp-tioners did not pay, they risked prosecution, and unlike indentured servants who traveled alone, redemptioners had to find places for all members of their family. If the market in servants was slow, “none would take a man with the encumbrances of a Wife or small Children.”

Further reading: Marianne Wokeck, Trade in Strangers: The Beginnings of Mass Migration to North America (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999).

—Sharon V Salinger

Red Shoes (1700?-1747) Choctaw leader Red Shoes (Shulush Homa) was a Choctaw Indian war leader whose actions precipitated the Choctaw Civil War (1746-50). Red Shoes grew up in a period of adjustment for the Choctaw. He was born around the time that the French first arrived on the Gulf Coast to establish the LOUISIANA colony in 1699. Choctaw trade with France began immediately in order to acquire guns to counter the slave raids of their British-supplied Native neighbors. Red Shoes rose to prominence in the 1720s and 1730s as the French paid Choctaw warriors to attack the Chickasaw Indians, and he led others successfully in battle. In addition to gaining the respect and admiration of his fellow Choctaw for demonstrating his mastery over the spiritual powers necessary for success in war, Red Shoes also acquired numerous gifts from the French that further bolstered his authority. France rarely supplied enough manufactured goods for the Indian trade, though, and some Choctaw like Red Shoes sought merchandise from British settlements in the east.

In the 1730s Red Shoes and partisans from his western division (one of three political and geographic divisions among the Choctaw) journeyed to Carolina several times to establish a consistent trade with the British. British trade goods entered Choctaw towns intermittently in the 1730s and 1740s, but France viewed contact between Britain and the Choctaw as a threat. They sought to isolate Red Shoes by denying him the presents distributed to all Choctaw chiefs and war leaders at annual conferences. In addition, eastern division Choctaw chiefs resented Red Shoes’s attempts to disrupt the relationship with France and to establish himself as a prominent leader.

At the urging of embittered chiefs in both the western and eastern divisions, and instigated further by France and Britain, Choctaw from those two divisions began fighting one another in 1746. Red Shoes and his followers killed three Frenchmen in August 1746, France placed a price on Red Shoes’s head that same year, and an eastern division warrior killed him on June 23, 1747. The war that was started by competition over access to manufactured goods continued, however, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of Choctaw before ending in 1750.

Further reading: James Taylor Carson, Searching for the Bright Path: The Mississippi Choctaws from Prehistory to Removal (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1999); Richard White, The Roots of Dependency: Subsistence, Environment, and Social Change among the Choctaws, Pawnees, and Navajos (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983).

—Greg O’Brien