![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() The date we recognize for the arrival of the first enslaved Africans in Virginia is 1619, but the first recorded arrival in North America occurred 117 years earlier in 1502 when Juan de Córdoba sent several of his black slaves from Spain to Hispaniola. But the marvels give way to matter-of-fact accounts of slave trafficking (Hortop) and tracts on the immorality of slavery (Mercado). A English sailor is awed by the Africans' skill in capturing the "sea-horses" (hippos) that surround their ships. A Portuguese seaman describes the "marvellous sight" of captives gathered on the African shore and recounts how other Africans "marvelled at the sight" of their ship. In addition, the accounts of African exploration and slave captures reflect the same encounter with the new and strange. And, of course, the result of the west African explorations was the transport of hundreds of thousands of Africans to North America over four centuries. We include the Atlantic slave trade here since its beginnings in the 1400s were as much part of the European breakout into the Atlantic Ocean as were the first voyages to North America. Map (zoomable) : West Africa, 1743 ( Guinea propia) Spanish: A priest's condemnation of the slave trade, 1587 1450 (PDF)Įnglish: A sailor's account of slave trafficking, 1567 Portuguese: Accounts of the capture of west Africans, ca. ![]()
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