Beginning their preparations in the slave trade in 1618, just two years previous,—allowing time against the landing of the first emigrants for successfully carrying out the project,—the African captives and Puritan emigrants, singularly enough, landed upon the same section of the continent at the same time (1620), the Pilgrims at Plymouth, and the captive slaves at New Bedford, but a few miles, comparatively, south.
“The country at this period was one vast wilderness. The continent of North America was then one continued forest … There were no horses, cattle, sheep, hogs, or tame beasts of any kind … There were no domestic poultry … There were no gardens, orchards, public roads, meadows, or cultivated fields … They often burned the woods that they could advantageously plant their corn … They had neither spice, salt, bread, butter, cheese, nor milk. They had no set meals, but eat when they were hungry, or could find anything to satisfy the cravings of nature. Very little of their food was derived from the earth, except what it spontaneously produced … The ground was both their seat and table … Their best bed was a skin … They had neither iron, steel, nor any metallic instruments.”—Ramsay’s Hist., pp. 39, 40.
We adduce not these extracts to disparage or detract from the real worth of our brother Indian,—for we are identical as the subjects of American wrongs, outrages, and oppression, and therefore one in interest,—far be it from our designs. Whatever opinion he may entertain of our race,—in accordance with the impressions made by the contumely heaped upon us by our mutual oppressor, the American nation,—we admire his, for the many deeds of heroic and noble daring with which the brief history of his liberty-loving people is replete. We sympathize with him, because our brethren are the successors of his in the degradation of American bondage; and we adduce them in evidence against the many aspersions heaped upon the African race, avowing that their inferiority to the other races, and unfitness for a high civil and social position, caused them to be reduced to servitude.
For the purpose of proving their availability and eminent fitness alone—not to say superiority, and not inferiority—first suggested to Europeans the substitution of African for that of Indian labor in the mines; that their superior adaptation to the difficulties consequent to a new country and different climate made them preferable to Europeans themselves; and their superior skill, industry, and general thriftiness in all that they did, first suggested to the colonists the propriety of turning their attention to agricultural and other industrial pursuits than those of mining operations.
It is evident, from what has herein been adduced,—the settlement of Captain John Smith being in the course of a few months reduced to thirty-eight, and that of the Pilgrims at Plymouth from one hundred and one to fifty-seven in six months,—that the whites nor aborigines were equal to the hard, and to them insurmountable, difficulties which then stood wide-spread before them.
An endless forest, the impenetrable earth,—the one to be removed, and the other to be excavated; towns and cities to be built, and farms to be cultivated,—all presented difficulties too arduous for the European then here, and entirely unknown to the native of the continent.
At a period such as this, when the natives themselves had fallen victims to the tasks imposed upon them by the usurpers, and the Europeans also were fast sinking beneath the influence and weight of climate and hardships; when food could not be obtained, nor the common conveniences of life procured; when arduous duties of life were to be performed, and none capable of doing them, save those who had previously, by their labors, not only in their own country, but in the new, so proven themselves capable, it is very evident, as the most natural consequence, the Africans were resorted to for the performance of every duty common to domestic life.
There were no laborers known to the colonists, from Cape Cod to Cape Lookout, than those of the African race. They entered at once into the mines, extracting therefrom the rich treasures which for a thousand ages lay hidden in the earth; when, plunging into the depths of the rivers, they culled from their sandy bottoms, to the astonishment of the natives and surprise of the Europeans, minerals and precious stones, which added to the pride and aggrandizement of every throne in Europe.
And from their knowledge of cultivation,—an art acquired in their native Africa,—the farming interests in the North and planting in the South were commenced with a prospect never dreamed of before the introduction on the continent of this most interesting, unexampled, hardy race of men. A race capable of the endurance of more toil, fatigue, and hunger than any other branch of the human family.