The Beginning of Slavery in America

[David Lockmiller]

Sometime in 1619, a Portuguese slave ship, the São João Bautista, traveled across the Atlantic Ocean with a hull filled with human cargo: captive Africans from Angola, in southwestern Africa. The men, women and children, most likely from the kingdoms of Ndongo and Kongo, endured the horrific journey, bound for a life of enslavement in Mexico. Almost half the captives had died by the time the ship was seized by two English pirate ships; the remaining Africans were taken to Point Comfort, a port near Jamestown, the capital of the English colony of Virginia, which the Virginia Company of London had established 12 years earlier. The colonist John Rolfe wrote to Sir Edwin Sandys, of the Virginia Company, that in August 1619, a “Dutch man of war” arrived in the colony and “brought not anything but 20 and odd Negroes, which the governor and cape merchant bought for victuals.” The Africans were most likely put to work in the tobacco fields that had recently been established in the area. (Source: New York Times, August 20, 2019.)

[Gene C]

(08-20-2019 10:58 AM)David Lockmiller Wrote:  The colonist John Rolfe wrote to Sir Edwin Sandys, of the Virginia Company, that in August 1619, a “Dutch man of war” arrived in the colony and “brought not anything but 20 and odd Negroes, which the governor and cape merchant bought for victuals.” (Source: New York Times, August 20, 2019.)

noun
plural noun: victuals
1. food or provisions.
"turkey and other savory victuals were served"
synonyms: food, food and drink, fare, cooking, cuisine, sustenance, nutriment, nourishment, nutrition

They ate them?

[L Verge]

Everyone should read this article from 2017 in the Smithsonian magazine. It gives a more accurate picture of who brought the first slaves to the New World. I learned this in the 1960s, but our current historical "guidelines" seem to have forgotten the real beginnings.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/m...180964873/

If you want to read a more upsetting history focused on what 400 years hath wrought, I can send you a very lengthy rendition published recently in the New York Times.