THE shipment of Africans to the Americas cannot be simply remembered as a trade because there was a lot of blackmailing of Africans who participated in the kidnapping and selling of their fellow brothers and sisters as mere commodities.
African leaders were continually fooled and pressured to play ball.
As covered in the first part of this series, slaves were exchanged for mundane items such as rum and gunpowder and in most cases the African leaders would be taken to ransom after being drawn into debt by the scheming Jews.
When the captives reached the coast of West Africa from the inland, they were caged together and restrained by ropes.
Some areas along the West African coast eventually built forts specifically meant to hold slaves before they were shipped to the West.
The captives would be subjected to humiliating treatment including force, opening the mouth to check the condition of one’s teeth.
They would be made to move their fingers and feet and this was done because the traders knew of the strenuous journey from inland.
Some of the captured people would have run for long distances in an attempt to escape the slave catchers before they are finally caught.
Others would have fought the slave catchers who would use the bull whip to restrain the captives. Inspection was, therefore, the first operation on arrival of the human cargo on arrival at the coast.
After the inspection the captains would make their pick and empty their ships of rum and gunpowder in payment for their African loot.
Throughout the trans-Atlantic slave trade, only about 10 percent of the captains in the trade were Jewish. However, most of the ships that made the trips between West Africa and the West were Jewish owned. The Jews preferred to stay in the background as often they do even today.
The rum that was sold to the Africans was from Jewish distilleries from Jewish strongholds such as Newport and Charleston.
The slaves would be shaved after which they were branded.
The branding pattern that was used was no different from the one used on cattle.
It was a painful process whereby iron was shaped into the initial letter of the slave dealer’s name.
It was then heated until it was red hot, and then the hot iron was pressed against the back or the hip of the captive.
This would cause excruciating pain and leave a scar that would turn into a tattoo when the wound finally heals.
The buyers would also make sure that they separated families as they made their selections.
That is to say that if they captured an entire family, they would put the father in one ship, the mother in another and the children in different ships as well.
There was a lot of mourning and crying for these poor African souls who could not defend themselves once they were kidnapped.
The ships were positioned not too near the coast and the slaves were made to sail to the ships in row boats that carried four to six people at a time.
This was done in order for the captain and his crew to avoid being overpowered by the captives.
Some of the captives would jump out of the rowboats in an attempt to escape, but would often be recaptured and punished.
Some preferred to drown and showed a lot of resistance because they did not want to leave their homeland.
The slave dealers, mean while, were always developing all sorts of tools and gadgets to afford them greater control of slaves and to make slave trade more efficient.
They undressed every offender so as to humiliate them to discourage would be escapees.
If an escapee was recaptured, the slave dealers would sometimes chop his legs off in full view of the rest of the captives.
This was to scare the rest from ever thinking of escaping.
The ships that were brought Africa to transport the slaves were barely equipped even to transport animals. Once the captives were on the ship, they were led in small numbers to the bottom of the ship.
The captives would then be chained together and locked on to the pillars of the ship.
The ships came in all sizes.
Some were large and others, small.
The larger ones came with more rum and required more slaves.
There were two ways of filling up a ship.
One was a loose pack and the other was a tight pack.
A loose pack meant that the captives would be fewer and as such would have slightly more sleeping space than a tight pack.
A tight pack would have the Africans closely packed together like sardines.
As covered in Part One, one Negro bought for about US$25 would be worth as much as US$2 000 on the American slave markets.
As such, the captains were always ordered to bring a tight pack by the Jewish slave traders.
The captains also knew that a lot of the slaves would die on the way and so they too preferred a tight pack.
The journey was three months long.
The captives would endure stench of excrement the whole journey as they would defecate and urinate on themselves while chained at the bottom of the ship.
There were fights for space and some captives would have their nails cut so as to prevent them from killing each other.
The bull whip was also generally applied on the Africans to maintain a semblance of order.
Women were chained together and the younger ones were constantly raped by the Captain and the crew. If a woman resisted, the crew used a small wooden clamp to apply pain to their fingers and they would also beat them up.
These women would often fall pregnant and would give birth to colored (mullato) children a few months after arriving in the Americas.
Many slaves passed away on the long uncomfortable journey from West Africa to the Americas.
Many died from flux, unknown illnesses and assaults from the captain and crew members.
The dead were recorded merely for accounting purposes after which their bodies were unchained and thrown overboard.
On occasion the slaves would be let on deck for stretching and exercise because being chained down on their backs and sides would cause fatigue.
The captives would at times show resistance on deck, but these were rarely successful because the captain and crew members were armed with canons and guns.
The captives were also men from different parts of West Africa and they spoke no common language at that time, but each tribe spoke in its own tongue.
This would hinder effective communication among the captives.
On arrival in the Americas, the Jewish slave traders would smear tar on the slaves to hide wounds.
This was a very painful process.
Most of the wounds would have been acquired from the chains and wooden planks the slaves were restrained to for all those months of journeying.
Some wounds would have been caused by the bull whip and other forms of assault.
When the slave ship docked, the Jews had a short time to condition their human cargo before getting them ready for inspection and sale and thus they hid the scars with tar.
The Jewish slave ship owners would usually sell the whole shipment to the highest bidder who would then auction the black captives on the slave markets.
The warehouses where the slaves were stored before being sold were mostly Jewish owned.
Many of the kidnapped Africans died before reaching the African coast and even more died during the journey to the Americas.
The ones who arrived in the Americas had a low life expectancy on arrival because the conditions they would have gone through were terrible.
There was malnourishment, disease from all the human excrement and lack of sanitation and also psychological problems from the whole experience of being enslaved and forcibly taken from one’s homeland.
The slaves who went to places like Haiti had a life expectancy of six years after arrival and the whites of this region preferred to keep bringing in short-living slaves rather than to spend many resources on maintaining those who lived long.
There were slaves who could not be bought on the slave markets and auction floors because they were in so bad a condition.
Some cunning Jews would therefore buy these lowly priced slaves and nurse them to health.
Once the slave returned to good health, the Jew would then resell that reject for the full price of a healthy slave.
The enormity of the suffering endured by children of the soil during the slave period is still to be appreciated by Africans.
This partly explains why many Africans think Western governments and their leaders can be genuine friends.