2. [The Negro in Spanish Exploration]

When we come to Columbus himself, the accuracy of whose accounts has so recently been questioned, we find a Negro, Pedro Alonso Niño, as the pilot of one of the famous three vessels. In 1496 Niño sailed to Santo Domingo and he was also with Columbus on his third voyage. With two men, Cristóbal de la Guerra, who served as pilot, and Luís de la Guerra, a Spanish merchant, in 1499 he planned what proved to be the first successful commercial voyage to the New World.

The revival of slavery at the close of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the system of Negro slavery were due to the commercial expansion of Portugal in the fifteenth century. The very word Negro is the modern Spanish and Portuguese form of the Latin niger. In 1441 Prince Henry sent out one Gonzales, who captured three Moors on the African coast. These men offered as ransom ten Negroes whom they had taken. The Negroes were taken to Lisbon in 1442, and in 1444 Prince Henry regularly began the European trade from the Guinea Coast. For fifty years his country enjoyed a monopoly of the traffic. By 1474 Negroes were numerous in Spain, and special interest attaches to Juan de Valladolid, probably the first of many Negroes who in time came to have influence and power over their people under the authority of a greater state. He was addressed as "judge of all the Negroes and mulattoes, free or slaves, which are in the very loyal and noble city of Seville, and throughout the whole archbishopric thereof." After 1500 there are frequent references to Negroes, especially in the Spanish West Indies. Instructions to Ovando, governor of Hispaniola, in 1501, prohibited the passage to the Indies of Jews, Moors, or recent converts, but authorized him to take over Negro slaves who had been born in the power of Christians. These orders were actually put in force the next year. Even the restricted importation Ovando found inadvisable, and he very soon requested that Negroes be not sent, as they ran away to the Indians, with whom they soon made friends. Isabella accordingly withdrew her permission, but after her death Ferdinand reverted to the old plan and in 1505 sent to Ovando seventeen Negro slaves for work in the copper-mines, where the severity of the labor was rapidly destroying the Indians. In 1510 Ferdinand directed that fifty Negroes be sent immediately, and that more be sent later; and in April of this year over a hundred were bought in the Lisbon market. This, says Bourne,[5] was the real beginning of the African slave-trade to America. Already, however, as early as 1504, a considerable number of Negroes had been introduced from Guinea because, as we are informed, "the work of one Negro was worth more than that of four Indians." In 1513 thirty Negroes assisted Balboa in building the first ships made on the Pacific Coast of America. In 1517 Spain formally entered upon the traffic, Charles V on his accession to the throne granting "license for the introduction of Negroes to the number of four hundred," and thereafter importation to the West Indies became a thriving industry. Those who came in these early years were sometimes men of considerable intelligence, having been trained as Mohammedans or Catholics. By 1518 Negroes were at work in the sugar-mills in Hispaniola, where they seem to have suffered from indulgence in drinks made from sugarcane. In 1521 it was ordered that Negro slaves should not be employed on errands as in general these tended to cultivate too close acquaintance with the Indians. In 1522 there was a rebellion on the sugar plantations in Hispaniola, primarily because the services of certain Indians were discontinued. Twenty Negroes from the Admiral's mill, uniting with twenty others who spoke the same language, killed a number of Christians. They fled and nine leagues away they killed another Spaniard and sacked a house. One Negro, assisted by twelve Indian slaves, also killed nine other Christians. After much trouble the Negroes were apprehended and several of them hanged. It was about 1526 that Negroes were first introduced within the present limits of the United States, being brought to a colony near what later became Jamestown, Va. Here the Negroes were harshly treated and in course of time they rose against their oppressors and fired their houses. The settlement was broken up, and the Negroes and their Spanish companions returned to Hispaniola, whence they had come. In 1540, in Quivira, in Mexico, there was a Negro who had taken holy orders; and in 1542 there were established at Guamanga three brotherhoods of the True Cross of Spaniards, one being for Indians and one for Negroes.

The outstanding instance of a Negro's heading in exploration is that of Estévanico (or Estévanillo, or Estévan, that is, Stephen), one of the four survivors of the ill-fated expedition of De Narvaez, who sailed from Spain, June 17, 1527. Having returned to Spain after many years of service in the New World, Pamfilo de Narvaez petitioned for a grant, and accordingly the right to conquer and colonize the country between the Rio de las Palmas, in eastern Mexico, and Florida was accorded him.[6] His force originally consisted of six hundred soldiers and colonists. The whole conduct of the expedition—incompetent in the extreme—furnished one of the most appalling tragedies of early exploration in America. The original number of men was reduced by half by storms and hurricanes and desertions in Santo Domingo and Cuba, and those who were left landed in April, 1528, near the entrance to Tampa Bay, on the west coast of Florida. One disaster followed another in the vicinity of Pensacola Bay and the mouth of the Mississippi until at length only four men survived. These were Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca; Andrés Dorantes de Carranza, a captain of infantry; Alonzo del Castillo Maldonado; and Estévanico, who had originally come from the west coast of Morocco and who was a slave of Dorantes. These men had most remarkable adventures in the years between 1528 and 1536, and as a narrative of suffering and privation Cabeza de Vaca's Journal has hardly an equal in the annals of the continent. Both Dorantes and Estévanico were captured, and indeed for a season or two all four men were forced to sojourn among the Indians. They treated the sick, and with such success did they work that their fame spread far and wide among the tribes. Crowds followed them from place to place, showering presents upon them. With Alonzo de Castillo, Estévanico sojourned for a while with the Yguazes, a very savage tribe that killed its own male children and bought those of strangers. He at length escaped from these people and spent several months with the Avavares. He afterwards went with De Vaca to the Maliacones, only a short distance from the Avavares, and still later he accompanied Alonzo de Castillo in exploring the country toward the Rio Grande. He was unexcelled as a guide who could make his way through new territory. In 1539 he went with Fray Marcos of Nice, the Father Provincial of the Franciscan order in New Spain, as a guide to the Seven Cities of Cibola, the villages of the ancestors of the present Zuñi Indians in western New Mexico. Preceding Fray Marcos by a few days and accompanied by natives who joined him on the way, he reached Háwikuh, the southern-most of the seven towns. Here he and all but three of his Indian followers were killed.

3. [Development of the Slave-Trade]

Portugal and Spain having demonstrated that the slave-trade was profitable, England also determined to engage in the traffic; and as early as 1530 William Hawkins, a merchant of Plymouth, visited the Guinea Coast and took away a few slaves. England really entered the field, however, with the voyage in 1562 of Captain John Hawkins, son of William, who in October of this year also went to the coast of Guinea. He had a fleet of three ships and one hundred men, and partly by the sword and partly by other means he took three hundred or more Negroes, whom he took to Santo Domingo and sold profitably.[7] He was richly laden going homeward and some of his stores were seized by Spanish vessels. Hawkins made two other voyages, one in 1564, and another, with Drake, in 1567. On his second voyage he had four armed ships, the largest being the Jesus, a vessel of seven hundred tons, and a force of one hundred and seventy men. December and January (1564-5) he spent in picking up freight, and by sickness and fights with the Negroes he lost many of his men. Then at the end of January he set out for the West Indies. He was becalmed for twenty-one days, but he arrived at the Island of Dominica March 9. He traded along the Spanish coasts and on his return to England he touched at various points in the West Indies and sailed along the coast of Florida. On his third voyage he had five ships. He himself was again in command of the Jesus, while Drake was in charge of the Judith, a little vessel of fifty tons. He got together between four and five hundred Negroes and again went to Dominica. He had various adventures and at last was thrown by a storm on the coast of Mexico. Here after three days he was attacked by a Spanish fleet of twelve vessels, and all of his ships were destroyed except the Judith and another small vessel, the Minion, which was so crowded that one hundred men risked the dangers on land rather than go to sea with her. On this last voyage Hawkins and Drake had among their companions the Earls of Pembroke and Leicester, who were then, like other young Elizabethans, seeking fame and fortune. It is noteworthy that in all that he did Hawkins seems to have had no sense of cruelty or wrong. He held religious services morning and evening, and in the spirit of the later Cromwell he enjoined upon his men to "serve God daily, love one another, preserve their victuals, beware of fire, and keep good company." Queen Elizabeth evidently regarded the opening of the slave-trade as a worthy achievement, for after his second voyage she made Hawkins a knight, giving him for a crest the device of a Negro's head and bust with the arms securely bound.

France joined in the traffic in 1624, and then Holland and Denmark, and the rivalry soon became intense. England, with her usual aggressiveness, assumed a commanding position, and, much more than has commonly been supposed, the Navigation Ordinance of 1651 and the two wars with the Dutch in the seventeenth century had as their basis the struggle for supremacy in the slave-trade. The English trade proper began with the granting of rights to special companies, to one in 1618, to another in 1631, and in 1662 to the "Company of Royal Adventurers," rechartered in 1672 as the "Royal African Company," to which in 1687 was given the exclusive right to trade between the Gold Coast and the British colonies in America. James, Duke of York, was interested in this last company, and it agreed to supply the West Indies with three thousand slaves annually. In 1698, on account of the incessant clamor of English merchants, the trade was opened generally, and any vessel carrying the British flag was by act of Parliament permitted to engage in it on payment of a duty of 10 per cent on English goods exported to Africa. New England immediately engaged in the traffic, and vessels from Boston and Newport went forth to the Gold Coast laden with hogsheads of rum. In course of time there developed a three-cornered trade by which molasses was brought from the West Indies to New England, made into rum to be taken to Africa and exchanged for slaves, the slaves in turn being brought to the West Indies or the Southern colonies.[8] A slave purchased for one hundred gallons of rum worth £10 brought from £20 to £50 when offered for sale in America.[9] Newport soon had twenty-two still houses, and even these could not satisfy the demand. England regarded the slave-trade as of such importance that when in 1713 she accepted the Peace of Utrecht she insisted on having awarded to her for thirty years the exclusive right to transport slaves to the Spanish colonies in America. When in the course of the eighteenth century the trade became fully developed, scores of vessels went forth each year to engage in it; but just how many slaves were brought to the present United States and how many were taken to the West Indies or South America, it is impossible to say. In 1726 the three cities of London, Bristol, and Liverpool alone had 171 ships engaged in the traffic, and the profits were said to warrant a thousand more, though such a number was probably never reached so far as England alone was concerned.[10]

4. [Planting of Slavery in the Colonies]

It is only for Virginia that we can state with definiteness the year in which Negro slaves were first brought to an English colony on the mainland. When legislation on the subject of slavery first appears elsewhere, slaves are already present. "About the last of August (1619)," says John Rolfe in John Smith's Generall Historie, "came in a Dutch man of warre, that sold us twenty Negars." These Negroes were sold into servitude, and Virginia did not give statutory recognition to slavery as a system until 1661, the importations being too small to make the matter one of importance. In this year, however, an act of assembly stated that Negroes were "incapable of making satisfaction for the time lost in running away by addition of time"; [11] and thus slavery gained a firm place in the oldest of the colonies.

Negroes were first imported into Massachusetts from Barbadoes a year or two before 1638, but in John Winthrop's Journal, under date February 26 of this year, we have positive evidence on the subject as follows: "Mr. Pierce in the Salem ship, the Desire, returned from the West Indies after seven months. He had been at Providence, and brought some cotton, and tobacco, and Negroes, etc., from thence, and salt from Tertugos. Dry fish and strong liquors are the only commodities for those parts. He met there two men-of-war, sent forth by the lords, etc., of Providence with letters of mart, who had taken divers prizes from the Spaniard and many Negroes." It was in 1641 that there was passed in Massachusetts the first act on the subject of slavery, and this was the first positive statement in any of the colonies with reference to the matter. Said this act: "There shall never be any bond slavery, villeinage, nor captivity among us, unless it be lawful captives, taken in just wars, and such strangers as willingly sell themselves or are sold to us, and these shall have all the liberties and Christian usages which the law of God established in Israel requires." This article clearly sanctioned slavery. Of the three classes of persons referred to, the first was made up of Indians, the second of white people under the system of indenture, and the third of Negroes. In this whole matter, as in many others, Massachusetts moved in advance of the other colonies. The first definitely to legalize slavery, in course of time she became also the foremost representative of sentiment against the system. In 1646 one John Smith brought home two Negroes from the Guinea Coast, where we are told he "had been the means of killing near a hundred more." The General Court, "conceiving themselves bound by the first opportunity to bear witness against the heinous and crying sin of man-stealing," ordered that the Negroes be sent at public expense to their native country.[12] In later cases, however, Massachusetts did not find herself able to follow this precedent. In general in these early years New England was more concerned about Indians than about Negroes, as the presence of the former in large numbers was a constant menace, while Negro slavery had not yet assumed its most serious aspects.