Hugh Danforth
Wisconsin 1992 Alliance
2120 University Ave., Apt. 324
Madison, WI 53705
608-233-4448
The Atlantic Slave Trade
On January 16, 1493 when Christopher Columbus began his return
journey to Spain after his first landing in the Americas in October
of 1492, he carried with him in his ships Taino captives.
On October 12, 1492 when Columbus arrived he was greeted by the
Tainos. Although he said they were "very well built, with very
handsome bodies and very good faces," he also thought they were
inferior, poor and technologically backwards. He wrote "they ought
to make good servants," and he offered to bring some of them back
with him so they could "learn to speak." He also felt "they would
easily be made Christians, because it seemed they had no religion."
According to Kirkpatrick Sale, author of The Conquest of Paradise,
"No clothes, no arms (modern weapons), no iron, and now no
religion--not even speech: hence they were fit to be servants and
captives. It may fairly be called the birth of American slavery."
Columbus saw the Tainos as a group of people that would be
regularly sent to Spain or held captive on the island, "because
with fifty men all of them can be held in subjection and can be
made to do whatever one might wish."
Columbus returned to the Americas in November 1493 with 17 ships
and 1200 colonists. In February 1494 several dozen Carib captives
were put aboard the first returning ship to Spain. In February
1495 when more ships were to return, 1,600 Tainos were rounded up
and, according to Kirkpatrick Sale "550 of them 'among the best
males and females'*, were loaded in chains." The others were
given to "whoever wanted them". The elimination of much of the
indigenous population through genocidal destruction led to the
beginning in 1505 of the shipping of Africans to be used as slaves
in the Americas. In four decades, millions of native people in the
Caribbean were wiped out and when slavery finally ended in 1870,
according to John Noble Wilford author of the Mysterious History of
Columbus, "nine to ten million blacks were forced to migrate to
America as slaves."
And where did it all begin? It began the day Columbus stepped on
shore in this hemisphere and made an entry into his journal; an
idea; and put this idea into motion January 16th, 1493. This
January 16th, 1993 will be the 500th anniversary of the start of
the Atlantic Slave Trade.
*Michele de Cuneo, a Ligurian nobleman on the second voyage