Page:The future of Africa.djvu/353

Rh wide ocean; trading in the flesh and blood of human beings! The system of slavery, as thus marked and distinguished, is a affair—was unknown anterior to the discovery of America; and therefore, as such, not a fact of history—not the general, universal state of the Negro race.

But it should be remembered that this event did not bring distress and slavery upon the Negro race only; it struck at once, with deadly, blasting influence, upon two races of men,—the Indian as well as the Negro; and if, because of its destructive and enslaving influence, we are to infer a peoples descent from Canaan, then the American Indian is of his seed, as well as the Negro. So soon as the European planted his foot upon the western continent, he seized upon the aborigine as his instrument and property. Before there was any thought of stealing the African and making him a slave, the Indian was enslaved and overworked; until, at last, he sank down, spent and overwearied, into the grave. And then, when the Indian was exterminated, the Negro was torn from his native land, brought across the water, and made to supply the red man's place. It is difficult to tell which has suffered the more from the discovery, and the slaverv which has grown out of it—the Indian or the African. "In the West Indies" to use the words of another, "the whole native population became speedily extinct; the ten millions of that almost unearthly race, the gentle Caribs, vanished like a