A Social History of the American Negro | Page 4

be found that the kingdoms lying toward the eastern end
of the Soudan were the home of races who inspired, rather than of races
who received, the traditions of civilization associated for us with the

name of ancient Egypt."[1]
[Footnote 1: A Tropical Dependency, James Nisbet & Co., Ltd.,
London, 1906, p. 17.]
If now we come to America, we find the Negro influence upon the
Indian to be so strong as to call in question all current conceptions of
American archæology and so early as to suggest the coming of men
from the Guinea Coast perhaps even before the coming of Columbus.[1]
The first natives of Africa to come were Mandingoes; many of the
words used by the Indians in their daily life appear to be not more than
corruptions or adaptations of words used by the tribes of Africa; and
the more we study the remains of those who lived in America before
1492, and the far-reaching influence of African products and habits, the
more must we acknowledge the strength of the position of the latest
thesis. This whole subject will doubtless receive much more attention
from scholars, but in any case it is evident that the demands of Negro
culture can no longer be lightly regarded or brushed aside, and that as a
scholarly contribution to the subject Wiener's work is of the very
highest importance.
[Footnote 1: See Wiener, I, 178.]
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,[1]
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