A Social History of the American Negro | Page 4

be so strong as to call in question all current conceptions of American arch?ology 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 Ni?o, as the pilot of one of the famous three vessels. In 1496 Ni?o sailed to Santo Domingo and he was also with Columbus on his third voyage. With two men, Crist��bal de la Guerra, who served as pilot, and Lu��s 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 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