10/16/2026
Recovering Enslaved Indigenous Lives from a Fragmented Book
Some of the records we work with arrive in pieces.
While working through the San José del Parral, Chihuahua baptismal register (1634–1649), our team reached a section of microfilm that had been badly damaged. The pages had been torn along their edges. For 29 consecutive frames, the same surviving fragment of a page appeared through the gaps, until the page finally emerged whole at IMG_0899.
We will record that page only once, so no individual is counted twice. But we will not discard the torn pages that came before it.
To learn more please visit: https://nativeboundunbound.org/about/
On one damaged page, a few phrases remain visible: India Criada, Indios laboríos, Indios del servicio, and Indio de Nuevo México, labels used for displaced Indigenous people bound to labor and service. The names that once accompanied those words may be lost, but the fragments still bear witness to their presence.
A partial entry still represents a person. A torn page is still evidence. And sometimes the smallest surviving fragments are enough to remind us of the Indigenous lives impacted by systems of enslavement.
