a quarrel with a Cabosheer (or greal man) who in revenge accused him of witchcraft, and sold him and his family for slaves.
Dr. Trotter having often asked Accra, a principal trader at Le Hou, what he meant by prisoners of war, found they were such as were carried off by a set of marauders, who ravage the country for that purpose. The bush-men making war to make trade (that is to make slaves) was a common way of speaking among the traders. The practice was also confirmed by the slaves on board, who showed by gestures how the robbers had come upon them; aid during their passage from Africa to the West Indies, some of the boy-slaves played a game, which they called slave-taking, or bush-fighting; showing the different manœuvres thereof in leaping; sallying, and retreating. Inquiries of this nature put to women, were answered only by violent bursts of sorrow. He once saw a black trader send his canoe to take three fishermen employed in the offing, who were immediately brought on board, and put in irons, and about a week afterwards he was paid for them. He remembers another man taken in the same way from on board a canoe alongside. The same trader very frequently sent slaves on board in the night, which, from their own information, he found were every one of them taken in the neighborhood of Annamaboe. lie remarked, that slaves sent off in the night, were not paid for till they had been some time on board, lest, he thinks, they should be claimed; for some were really restored, one in particular, a boy, was earned on shore by some near relations, which boy told him he had lived in the neighborhood of Annamaboe, and was kidnapped. There were many boys and girls on board Dr. Trotter's ship, who had no relations on board. Many of them told him they had been kidnapped in the neighborhood of Annamaboe, particularly a girl of about eight years old, who said she had been carried off from her mother by the man who sold her to the ship.
Mr. Palconbridge was assured by the Rev. Philip Quakoo, chaplain at Cape Coast Castle, on the Gold Coast, that the greatest number of slaves were made by kidnapping. He has heard that the men on this part of the coast, dress up and employ women, to entice young men, that they may be convicted of adultery and sold.
Lieutenant Simpson heard at Cape Coast Castle, and other parts of the Gold Coast, repeatedly from the black traders, that the slave trade made wars and palavers. Mr. Quakoo, chaplain at Cape Coast Castle, informed him that wars were made in the interior parts, for the sole purpose of getting slaves. There are two crimes on the Gold Coast, which seem made on purpose to procure slaves: adultery and the removal of fetiches.[1] As to adultery, he warned against any woman not pointed out to him, for that the kings kept several who were sent out to allure the unwary. As to fetiches, consisting of pieces of wood, old pitchers, kettles, and the like, laid in the path-ways, he was warned to avoid displacing them, for if he should, the natives who were
- ↑ Certain things of various sorts, to which the superstition of the country has ordered, for various reasons, an attention to be paid.
