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Slave Capture
How were slaves caught? Their tribal rulers were often eager to sell them. The bodies could be exchanged for trinkets or guns or whisky. When the King of Dahomey was offered substantial bribes to end his trafficking in flesh, he declared: "Nothing will recompense me for the slave trade." Nor could we expect this particular monarch to have many scruples about the sanctity of human life: his favourite sport was to watch an assortment of his subjects being tipped off the palace walls into a pit thirty feet below, where they were mutilated and then thrown to the vultures.
Up and down the African coasts would sail the slave ships, crawling in search of their prey. They were on the look out for smoke signals indicating that some tribe had bodies for sale.
Once caught, the slaves would be tied together and driven down to the coast. A companion of Livingstone writes of seeing five hundred young men, aged between 10 and 15, roped together, their necks held in forked sticks. They were being driven down to the coast, "their necks chafed and bleeding, their eyes streaming with tears." Sometimes, the drivers were on horseback, and the slaves were whipped up to a trot, to keep pace with them.
Arrived on the coast, the slaves were stored in barracoons. These were strong sheds built of wooden piles. Along each line of piles hung rows of chains, with a special link to hold the slave's neck. The |
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