Peonage Definition

Peonage Sentence Examples

• The government itself must be held partly responsible, as for the transportation of the mountain-bred Yaquis to the low, tropical plains of Yucatan (see Herman Whitaker's The Planter, 1909), but the influence of three and a half centuries of slavery and peonage cannot be shaken off in a generation.

• Neglect of their children, unsanitary habits and surroundings, tribal intermarriage and peonage are the principal causes of the decreasing Indian population.

• But the contract system for convicts and the peonage system (under which immigrants were held in practical slavery while they " worked out " advances made for passage-money, &c.) were still sources of much injustice.

• Peons were persons held in servitude on account of debt, and the peonage system was sanctioned both by the custom of the Mexican provinces and by the laws of the Territory.

• Peonage remained a legalized institution until 1867, when it was prohibited by an act of Congress.