f its respective
sovereign."[16]

The catching, holding and shipping of Negroes on the African coast was
the means by which the demand for slaves was met. With a few minor
exceptions, the whites did not engage directly in slave catching. In
most instances they bought their slaves from native brokers who lived in
the coast towns. The brokers, in turn, received their slaves from the
interior, where they were captured during wars, by professional raiding
parties, well supplied with arms and ammunition. Slave-catching, begun
as a kidnaping of individuals, developed into a large-scale traffic that
provided the revenue of the more war-like natives. Villages were
attacked and burned, and whole tribes were destroyed or driven off to
the slave-pens on the coast. After 1750, for nearly a hundred years, the
demand for slaves was so great and the profits were so large that no
pains were spared to secure them.

The Slave Coast native was compelled to choose between being a
slave-catcher or a slave. As a slave-catcher he spread terror and
destruction among his fellows, seized them and sold them to white men.
As a slave he made the long journey across the Atlantic.

The number of slaves carried away from Africa is variously estimated.
Claridge states that "the Guinea Coast as a whole supplied as many as
from 70,000 to 100,000 yearly" in 1700.[17] Bogart estimates the number
of slaves secured as 2,500 per year in 1700; 15,000 to 20,000 per year
from 1713 to 1753; in 1771, 47,000 carried by British ships alone; and
in 1768 the slaves shipped from the African coast numbered 97,000.[18]
Add to these numbers those who were killed in the raids; those who died
in the camps, where the mortality was very high, and those who committed
suicide. The total represents the disturbing influence that the slave
trade introduced into the native African civilization.

In the early years of the trade the ships were small and carried only a
few hundred Negroes at most. As the trade grew, larger and faster ships
were built with galleries between the decks. On these galleries the
blacks were forced to lie with their feet outboard--ironed together, two
and two, with the chains fastened to staples in the deck. "They were
squeezed so tightly together that the average space allowed to each one
was but 16 inches by five and a half feet."[19] The galleries were
frequently made of rough lumber, not tightly joined. Later, when the
trade was outlawed, the slaves