Barbot’s Travels, About 1700 — Astley, Vol. Ii
Barbot, speaking of the blacks, says, rather than work they will rob and murder on the highway, or carry off those of a neighbouring village, and sell them for slaves.—(p. 255.)
They go farther yet; for some sell their own children, kindred, or neighbours. This, Barbot tells us, has often happened. To compass it, they desire the person they intend to sell, to help them in carrying something to the factory, by the way of trade; and when there the person so deluded, not understanding the language, is sold and delivered up as a slave, notwithstanding all his resistance and exclaiming against the treachery.
Le Maire tells an odd story on this occasion, which Barbot says he heard in Africa. A man, it seems, had formed a design of selling his son, who, suspecting his intention, when they came to the factory, went aside to the storehouse and sold his father. When the old man saw them about to fetter him he cried out, he was his father; but the son denying it, the bargain held good. The son met his desert, for, returning with his merchandize, he met a negro chief, who stripped him of his ill-gotten wealth, and sold him at the same market.
Abundance of little blacks, of both sexes, are also stolen away by their neighbours, when found abroad on the roads, or in the woods, or else in the lugaus, or corn-fields, where they are kept all day, to scare the small birds that come in swarms to feed on the millet.—(p. 256.)