a formal treaty between sixteen
hundred Negroes and the Dutch was made. Immediately a new group revolted
under a Mohammedan, Arabi, and they obtained land and liberty. In 1763 the
coast Negroes revolted. They were checked, but made terms and settled in
the interior. The Bush Negroes fought against both French and English to
save Guiana to the Dutch, but Guiana was eventually divided between the
three. The Bush Negroes still maintain their independence and vigor.

The French encouraged settlements in the West Indies in the seventeenth
century, but at last, finding that French immigrants would not come, they
began about 1642 to import Negroes. Owing to wars with England, slaves
were supplied by the Dutch and Portuguese, although the Royal Senegal
Company held the coveted Asiento from 1701 to 1713.

It was in the island of Hayti, however, that French slavery centered.
Pirates from many nations, but chiefly French, began to frequent the
island, and in 1663 the French annexed the eastern part, thus dividing the
island between France and Spain. By 1680 there were so many slaves and
mulattoes that Louis XIV issued his celebrated Code Noir, which was
notable in compelling bachelor masters, fathers of slave children, to
marry their concubines. Children followed the condition of the mother as
to slavery or freedom; they could have no property; harsh punishments were
provided for, but families could not be separated by sale except in the
case of grown children; emancipation with full civil rights was made
possible for any slave twenty years of age or more. When Louisiana was
settled and the Alabama coast, slaves were introduced there. Louisiana was
transferred to Spain in 1762, against the resistance of both settlers and
slaves, but Spain took possession in 1769 and introduced more Negroes.

Later, in Hayti, a more liberal policy encouraged trade; war was over and
capital and slaves poured in. Sugar, coffee, chocolate, indigo, dyes, and
spices were raised. There were large numbers of mulattoes, many of whom
were educated in France, and many masters married Negro women who had
inherited large properties, just as in the United States to-day white men
are marrying eagerly the landed Indian women in the West. When white
immigration increased in 1749, however, prejudice arose against these
mulattoes and severe laws were passed depriving them of civil rights,
entrance into the professions, and the right to hold office; severe edicts
w