them were fierce and warlike. Others were docile and amenable to
discipline. The former made indifferent slaves; the latter were eagerly
sought after. "The Wyndahs, Nagoes and Pawpaws of the Slave Coast were
generally the most highly esteemed of all. They were lusty and
industrious, cheerful and submissive."[13]

The natives of the Slave Coast had made some notable cultural advances.
They smelted metals; made pottery; wove; manufactured swords and spears
of merit; built houses of stone and of mud, and made ornaments of some
artistic value. They had developed trade with the interior, taking salt
from the coast and bartering it for gold, ivory and other commodities at
regular "market places."

The native civilization along the West coast of Africa was far from
ideal, but it was a civilization which had established itself and which
had made progress during historic times. It was a civilization that had
evolved language; arts and crafts; tribal unity; village life, and
communal organization. This native African civilization, in the
seventeenth, eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries was confronted by
an insatiable demand for black slaves. The conflicts that resulted from
the efforts to supply that demand revolutionized and virtually destroyed
all that was worthy of preservation in the native culture.

When the whites first went to the Slave Coast there was comparatively
little slavery among the natives. Some captives, taken in war; some
debtors, unable to meet their obligations, and some violators of
religious rites, were held by the chief or the headman of the tribe. On
occasion he would sell these slaves, but the slave trade was never
established as a business until the white man organized it.

The whites came, and with guile and by force they persuaded and
compelled the natives to permit the erection of forts and of trading
posts. From the time of the first Portuguese settlement, in 1482, the
whites began their work with rum and finished it with gun-powder. Rum
destroyed the stamina of the native; gun-powder rendered his intertribal
wars more destructive. These two agencies of European civilization
combined, the one to degenerate, the other to destroy the native tribal
life.

The traders, adventurers, buccaneers and pirates that gathered along the
Slave Coast were not able to teach the natives anything in the way of
cruelty, but they could and did give them lessons in cunning, trickery
and double dealing. Early