men came seeking slaves and the blacks had them to sell.
Tt is a curious subject of inquiry, when we come to consider how the African chiefs happened to have slaves for sale. That slaves were few in number during the earlier years of the trade is certain. That is to say, the great men of every tribe held a few of their neighbors as personal property. They were detained in various ways, but chiefly through taking prisoners in the fights with neighboring tribes, for strange as it may seem now, the presence of slaves in a tribe indicated some degree of mercy in the minds of the slaveowners. Instead of killing everybody, old and young, when attacking an enemy, these slave-owners saved some alive.
One other way was through the tribal laws regarding debts. The civilized people threw the insolvent debtor into prison and held him there, very frequently, until he died—sometimes while he starved to death. The black savages made the debtor work out the debt. It was also noted by the whites that when a negro husband found one of his wives unfaithful he made a slave of her lover.
More remarkable still was another source of slaveowning among the Africans. So jealous were they of their right to worship their gods when, where, and how they pleased, that for a man to desecrate or remove a neighbor's fetish, or even to touch it, was an offence for which the penalty was often slavery.
War, crime, and superstition supplied the great men of the tribes with servants, and these they would sell on occasion. That they might also sell wives and
