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During the European colonization of the Americas, the rape of African slave women was not held to be a crime under Colonial Law. Under chattel slavery, white slave masters often raped their female subjects, producing varying degrees of mulatto offspring. Depending on the offspring's phenotype, they would continue living as slaves (as their mothers), specifically in the Southern United States, mulattoes inherited slave status if their mothers were slaves. Some offspring were afforded the life of passing for white or claiming to be part Indian In addition, the term "mulatto" was also used to refer to the offspring of whites who intermarried with South Asian(Pakistan or India) indentured servants brought over to the British American colonies by the East India Company.So being Mulatto does not offer or support a realistic claim to any native american status and should never be used as a basis for federal recognition such as the Lumbee would have it mean.