## Introduction  
In nearly every economic and social history of the modern Caribbean, the presumed death, disappearance, or dispersal of First Peoples is given as the reason for the introduction of enslaved blacks. This textual silence, or 'historical trope of anti-indigeneity', is reiterated in studies of race, ethnicity and economy that centre on enslaved and indentured peoples (Forte, 2004-2005). In large slaveholding regions of the Americas, it is the death of Indigenous Peoples, their supposed inability to work, and their association with lands outside of the plantation that are given as reasons for the need for black slave labour. Formative in producing the modern subjects of historical and sociological inquiry and figurative reflection, the 'plantation machine' - a term coined to encapsulate the broad political-economic and social-cultural effects of the plantation mode of production in the Caribbean - ultimately defines the spaces and subjects of epistemological value (Benítez-Rojo, 1996). First Peoples recede to the margins of the plantation, the critical apparatus that studies its modes of sociality, and to the margins of understanding of how formerly enslaved and indentured peoples inhabit a new native status. The presumed lack of Indigenous presence in the Caribbean islands allows blacks an unquestioned native status, while in North, South and Central America the considerable presence of Indigenous