What Percentage of Slaves that came to the US were sold by Native African Tribes

Position:Home>History> What Percentage of Slaves that came to the US were sold by Native African Tribes

Question:

really not trying to be racist at all but I checked a few websites that said African tribes sold their own race for profit purposes to the white man!.!.!.its a shame I never learned this in my school!. If this is a very slim percentage that it could be understood that It wasn't taught but if it was a higher ratio it is something that should have been in at least 1 of my history books all the way from Elementary school to College!. Www@QuestionHome@Com

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker:

Im guessing around 80 percent of African Slaves were sold by other tribes!.

The tribes were: Wolof, Fula, Mandika, Kru, Balanta, Hausa, Gurma, Yoruba, Igbo, Bamilike, Rungu, Mbeti, Kongo, Mbundu, Lunda, Ovimbundu, Markua, Maravi, Inthembane
Www@QuestionHome@Com

Between 1450 and the end of the nineteenth century, slaves were obtained from along the west coast of Africa with the full and active co-operation of African kings and merchants!. (There were occasional military campaigns organised by Europeans to capture slaves, especially by the Portuguese in what is now Angola, but this accounts for only a small percentage of the total!.) In return, the African kings and merchants received various trade goods including beads, cowrie shells (used as money), textiles, brandy, horses, and perhaps most importantly, guns!. The guns were used to help expand empires and obtain more slaves, until they were finally used against the European colonisers!. The export of trade goods from Europe to Africa forms the first side of the triangular trade!.
Trans-Atlantic exports by region
1650-1900
Region Number of slaves

Senegambia 479,900
Upper Guinea 411,200
Windward Coast 183,200
Gold Coast 1,035,600
Blight of Benin 2,016,200
Blight of Biafra 1,463,700
West Central 4,179,500
South East 470,900
Total 10,240,200
Www@QuestionHome@Com

It was probably a much higher percentage than some would like to admit!. During that time, and still today to some extent, Africa was highly divided by tribal groups!. Each tribe had allies and enemies, and did not see any problem selling their enemies into slavery overseas!. In fact, the slave trade would not have been nearly so lucrative or widespread if the white slavers had needed to capture all the slaves themselves!. It would have required large raiding parties, and eventually any groups of white men would likely have been avoided or attacked on sight!. Www@QuestionHome@Com

most were stolen!. but you cant look at the africans as selling their own race, to them they were selling enemy tribes not friends and allies!. but just like the great inventions by blacks and the indians getting bamboozled you wont find this stuff in school history books!. but another reason that info isnt in the books is one its not in american and 2 the sellers eventually got captured too, and they all had to become friends or at least get along, chief alexcan had to lay on his enemy chief cochaka on that boat!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

Quite a high percentage, it seems!.
http://en!.wikipedia!.org/wiki/African_sla!.!.!.

To quote:
"The Atlantic slave trade peaked in the late 18th century, when the largest number of slaves were captured on raiding expeditions into the interior of West Africa!. These expeditions were typically carried out by African kingdoms against weaker African tribes and peoples!. These mass slavers included the Oyo empire (Yoruba), Kong Empire, Kingdom of Benin, Kingdom of Fouta Djallon, Kingdom of Fouta Tooro, Kingdom of Koya, Kingdom of Khasso, Kingdom of Kaabu, Fante Confederacy, Ashanti Confederacy, and the kingdom of Dahomey!. Europeans rarely entered the interior of Africa, due to fear of disease and moreover fierce African resistance!.

Before the arrival of the Portuguese, slavery had already existed in Kingdom of Kongo!. Despite its establishment within his kingdom, Afonso I of Kongo believed that the slave trade should be subject to Kongo law!. When he suspected the Portuguese of receiving illegally enslaved persons to sell, he wrote letters to the King Jo?o III of Portugal in 1526 imploring him to put a stop to the practice!.

The kings of Dahomey sold their war captives into transatlantic slavery, who otherwise would have been killed in a ceremony known as the Annual Customs!. As one of West Africa's principal slave states, Dahomey became extremely unpopular with neighbouring peoples!. Like the Bambara Empire to the east, the Khasso kingdoms depended heavily on the slave trade for their economy!. A family's status was indicated by the number of slaves it owned, leading to wars for the sole purpose of taking more captives!. This trade led the Khasso into increasing contact with the European settlements of Africa's west coast, particularly the French!. Benin grew increasingly rich during the 16th and 17th centuries on the slave trade with Europe; slaves from enemy states of the interior were sold, and carried to the Americas in Dutch and Portuguese ships!. The Bight of Benin's shore soon came to be known as the "Slave Coast"!.

King Gezo of Dahomey said in 1840's:

'The slave trade is the ruling principle of my people!. It is the source and the glory of their wealth…the mother lulls the child to sleep with notes of triumph over an enemy reduced to slavery…' "

As the article points out, Europeans did not do their own slave raiding, for fear of disease (the climate was also extremely uncomfortable for them)!. It was easier (and healthier) to trade for slaves captured by an African tribe which did that sort of thing anyway than to blunder about in the unmapped interior of an alien land with no idea of where to look for the inhabitants but with every chance of being ambushed by them or coming down with strange diseases!.

So although the article does not give a percentage that would answer your question, the percentage was evidently very high - between 99 and 100%!.Www@QuestionHome@Com