This Abominable Slavery

1.4 a-f Excerpts from First District Court, Minute Book, 1851-1896, Don Pedro León Luján libel trial

United States vs Pedro Leon and Others

The libel trial of New Mexican trader Don Pedro León Luján and company. Their property was confiscated in compensation for violation of the Trade and Intercourse Act of 1834.

Document Introduction

George A. Smith, as lead Counsel for Don Pedro León Luján’s defense, filed motions in behalf of Luján and the other defendants in the libel case attempting to protect their property from being confiscated by the court. Smith’s efforts were in vain but Joshua Slayton, as the court appointed attorney to represent the eight Indian captives was successful in persuading the court that his clients, the Indian captives, should not be confiscated as property to be disposed of by the court to settle Luján’s debt. U. S. Attorney Seth M. Blair argued that slavery existed in the territory as a result of its ongoing and longstanding practice. “The facts show that for a long series of years the Indians here have been in the constant practice of selling their children to the Mexicans for slaves, and that the court must therefore deem it a lawful trade.” In his estimation, the laws of the United States that governed western territories did not prohibit human trafficking, so it was therefore implicitly legal and “the Indians should be held as slaves.”[1] Slayton stridently disagreed. He insisted that slavery was “against human liberty” and therefore could “not exist by implication, but it must have the authority of law to sustain it.” Snow sided with Slayton on this point and in so doing he provided the motivation for the passage of the Indian indenture bill and the Black servant code during the legislative session.[2]

For the libel case the court captured testimonies on January 15, 1852, from Brigham Young and Isaac Morley. The following day Phillipe Santiago Archuleta testified as one of the defendants in the case, as did Francis Martin Pomeroy, the court appointed Spanish interpreter and also a resident of Salt Lake City who purchased trade goods from Luján before his arrest and was familiar with some of the details of the case. Associate Justice Zerubbabel Snow handed down his decision in the libel case on January 24, 1852, the last document in this section. In it Snow concluded that in order for slavery to exist in the territory, legislators had to write laws to allow it. In the absence of such laws, Snow deemed “the said Indians . . . to be free.”

[1] Blair would later attempt to legalize African slavery in Utah during the 1856 Constitutional Convention.

[2] Snow itemizes the key points that Blair and Slayton made during the trials in “First Judicial Court,” Deseret News, 6 March 1852, 4.