Page:W. E. B. Du Bois - The Gift of Black Folk.pdf/52

40 Brazil where we have ample documentary evidence of the fact.”

All this is prehistoric and in part conjectural and yet it seems reasonable to suppose that much in custom trade and religion which has been regarded as characteristic of the American Indian arose from Negro influences in the pre-Columbian period.

After the discovery of America by Columbus many Negroes came with the early explorers. Many of these early black men were civilized Christians and sprung from the large numbers of Negroes imported into Spain and Portugal during the fifteenth century, where they replaced as laborers the expelled Moors. Afterward came the mass of slaves brought by the direct African slave trade.

From the beginning of the fifteenth century mention of the Negro in America becomes frequent. In 1501 they were permitted to enter the colonies; in 1503 the Governor of Hispaniola sought to prohibit their transportation to America because they fled to the Indians and taught them bad manners. By 1506 they were coming again because the work of one Negro was worth more than that of four Indians. In 1518 the new sugar culture in Spain and the Canary Islands began