Part 8

Ibid., p. 10.

"Referring to your inquiry of November 20, 1919, concerning the Cherokee Indian Reservation, you are advised that the Cherokee Indian country in the northeastern part of Oklahoma aggregated 4,420,068 acres.

"Of said area 4,346,223 acres have been allotted in severalty to the enrolled members of said Cherokee Indian Nation, Oklahoma. Twenty-two thousand eight hundred and eighty acres were disposed of as town lots, or reserved for railway rights of way, churches, schools, cemeteries, etc., and the remaining area has been sold, or otherwise disposed of as provided by law.

"The Cherokee tribal land in Oklahoma with the exception of the possible title of said Nation to certain river beds has been disposed of.

"In reference to the Eastern band of Cherokees, you are advised that said Indians who have been incorporated hold title in fee to certain land in North Carolina, known as the Qualla Reservation and certain other lands, aggregating 63,211 acres."--Letter from the Office of Indian Affairs. Dec. 9, 1919, "In re Cherokee land."

"The Indian and His Problem," F. E. Leupp. New York, Scribners, 1910, p. 24.

See Bulletin 184, New York State Museum, Albany, 1916, p. 61.

IV. SLAVERY FOR A RACE

1. The Labor Shortage

The American colonists took the land which they required for settlement from the Indians. The labor necessary to work this land was not so easily secured. The colonists had set themselves the task of establishing European civilization upon a virgin continent. In order to achieve this result, they had to cut the forests; clear the land; build houses; cultivate the soil; construct ships; smelt iron, and carry on a multitude of activities that were incidental to setting up an old way of life in a new world. The one supreme and immediate need was the need for labor power. From the earliest days of colonization there had been no lack of harbors, fertile soil, timber, minerals and other resources. From the earliest days the colonists experienced a labor shortage.

The labor situation was trebly difficult. First, there was no native labor; second, passage from Europe was so long and so hazardous that only the bold and venturesome were willing to attempt it, and third, when these adventurers did reach the new world, they had a choice between taking up free land and working it for themselves and taking service with a master. Men possessing sufficient initiative to leave an old home and make a journey across the sea were not the men to submit themselves to unnecessary authority when they might, at will, become masters of their own fortunes. The appeal of a new life was its own argument, and the newcomers struck out for themselves.

Throughout the colonies, and particularly in the South where the plantation culture of rice and tobacco, and later of cotton, called for large numbers of unskilled workers, the labor problem was acute. The abundance of raw materials and fertile land; the speedy growth of industry in the North and of agriculture in the South; the generous profits and expanding markets created a labor demand which far outstripped the meager supply,--a demand that was met by the importation of black slaves from Africa.

2. The Slave Coast

The "Slave Coast" from which most of the Negroes came was discovered by Portuguese navigators, who were the first Europeans to venture down the West coast of Africa, and, rounding the "lobe" of the continent, to sail East along the "Gold Coast." The trade in gold and ivory which sprang up as a result of these early explorations led other nations of Europe to begin an eager competition which eventually brought French, Dutch, German, Danish and English commercial interests into sharp conflict with the Portuguese.

Ships sailing from the Gold Coast for home ports made a practice of picking up such slaves as they could easily secure. By 1450 the number reaching Portugal each year was placed at 600 or 700. From this small and quite incidental beginning there developed a trade which eventually supplied Europe, the West Indies, North America and South America with black slaves.

Along the "Slave Coast," which extended from Cape Verde on the North to Cape St. Martha on the South, and in the hinterland there lived Negroes of varying temperaments and of varying standards of culture. Some of them were fierce and warlike. Others were docile and amenable to discipline. The former made indifferent slaves; the latter were eagerly sought after. "The Wyndahs, Nagoes and Pawpaws of the Slave Coast were generally the most highly esteemed of all. They were lusty and industrious, cheerful and submissive."

The natives of the Slave Coast had made some notable cultural advances. They smelted metals; made pottery; wove; manufactured swords and spears of merit; built houses of stone and of mud, and made ornaments of some artistic value. They had developed trade with the interior, taking salt from the coast and bartering it for gold, ivory and other commodities at regular "market places."

The native civilization along the West coast of Africa was far from ideal, but it was a civilization which had established itself and which had made progress during historic times. It was a civilization that had evolved language; arts and crafts; tribal unity; village life, and communal organization. This native African civilization, in the seventeenth, eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries was confronted by an insatiable demand for black slaves. The conflicts that resulted from the efforts to supply that demand revolutionized and virtually destroyed all that was worthy of preservation in the native culture.

When the whites first went to the Slave Coast there was comparatively little slavery among the natives. Some captives, taken in war; some debtors, unable to meet their obligations, and some violators of religious rites, were held by the chief or the headman of the tribe. On occasion he would sell these slaves, but the slave trade was never established as a business until the white man organized it.

The whites came, and with guile and by force they persuaded and compelled the natives to permit the erection of forts and of trading posts. From the time of the first Portuguese settlement, in 1482, the whites began their work with rum and finished it with gun-powder. Rum destroyed the stamina of the native; gun-powder rendered his intertribal wars more destructive. These two agencies of European civilization combined, the one to degenerate, the other to destroy the native tribal life.

The traders, adventurers, buccaneers and pirates that gathered along the Slave Coast were not able to teach the natives anything in the way of cruelty, but they could and did give them lessons in cunning, trickery and double dealing. Early in the history of the Gold Coast the whites began using the natives to make war on commercial rivals. In one famous instance, "the Dutch had instigated the King of Fetu to refuse the Assins permission to pass through his territory. These people used to bring a great deal of gold to Cape Coast Castle (English), and the Dutch hoped in this way to divert the trade to their own settlements. The King having complied and plundered some of the traders on the way down, the Assins declared war against him and were assisted by the English with arms and ammunition. The King of Sabol was also paid to help them, and the allied army (20,000 strong) inflicted a crushing defeat on the Fetus."

On another occasion, the Dutch were worsted in a war with some of the native tribes. Realizing that if they were to maintain themselves on the Coast they must raise an army as quickly as possible, they approached the Fetus and bargained with them to take the field and fight the Komendas until they had utterly exterminated them, on payment of $4,500. But no sooner had this arrangement been made than the English paid the Fetus an additional $4,500 to remain neutral!

Before 1750, when the competition for the slaves was less keen, and the supply came nearer to meeting the demand, the slavers were probably as honest in this as they were in any other trade with the natives. The whites encouraged and incited the native tribes to make war upon one another for the benefit of the whites. The whites fostered kidnaping, slavery and the slave trade. The natives were urged to betray one another, and the whites took advantage of their treachery. During the four hundred years that the African slave trade was continued, it was the whites who encouraged it; fostered it; and backed it financially. The slave trade was a white man's trade, carried on under conditions as far removed from the conditions of ordinary African life as the manufacturing and trading of Europe were removed from the manufacturing and trading of the Africans.

3. The Slave Trade

With the pressing demand from the Americas for a generous supply of black slaves, the business of securing them became one of the chief commercial activities of the time. "The trade bulked so large in the world's commerce in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that every important maritime community on the Atlantic sought a share, generally with the sanction and often with the active assistance of its respective sovereign."

The catching, holding and shipping of Negroes on the African coast was the means by which the demand for slaves was met. With a few minor exceptions, the whites did not engage directly in slave catching. In most instances they bought their slaves from native brokers who lived in the coast towns. The brokers, in turn, received their slaves from the interior, where they were captured during wars, by professional raiding parties, well supplied with arms and ammunition. Slave-catching, begun as a kidnaping of individuals, developed into a large-scale traffic that provided the revenue of the more war-like natives. Villages were attacked and burned, and whole tribes were destroyed or driven off to the slave-pens on the coast. After 1750, for nearly a hundred years, the demand for slaves was so great and the profits were so large that no pains were spared to secure them.

The Slave Coast native was compelled to choose between being a slave-catcher or a slave. As a slave-catcher he spread terror and destruction among his fellows, seized them and sold them to white men. As a slave he made the long journey across the Atlantic.

The number of slaves carried away from Africa is variously estimated. Claridge states that "the Guinea Coast as a whole supplied as many as from 70,000 to 100,000 yearly" in 1700. Bogart estimates the number of slaves secured as 2,500 per year in 1700; 15,000 to 20,000 per year from 1713 to 1753; in 1771, 47,000 carried by British ships alone; and in 1768 the slaves shipped from the African coast numbered 97,000. Add to these numbers those who were killed in the raids; those who died in the camps, where the mortality was very high, and those who committed suicide. The total represents the disturbing influence that the slave trade introduced into the native African civilization.