This petition provides an account of her experience being forcibly removed from her homeland and brought to the colonies.īut her affrighted imagination, in its most alarming extension, never represented distresses equal to what she hath since really experienced – for before she had Twelve years enjoyed the fragrance of her native groves, and e’er she realized, that Europeans placed their happiness in the yellow dust which she carelessly marked with her infant footsteps – even when she, in a sacred grove, with each hand in that of a tender Parent, was paying her devotions to the great Orisa who made all things – an armed band of white men, driving many of her Countrymen in Chains, ran into the hallowed shade! – could the Tears, the sighs and supplications, bursting from Tortured Parental affection, have blunted the keen edge of Avarice, she might have been rescued from Agony, which many of her Country's Children have felt, but which none hath ever described, - in vain she lifted her supplicating voice to an insulted father, and her guiltless hands to a dishonoured Deity! She was ravished from the bosom of her Country, from the arms of her friends – while the advanced age of her Parents, rendering them unfit for servitude, cruelly separated her from them forever! In addition to the physical violations enslaved people suffered, they were ripped away from their families, homelands, social positions, and languages.īelinda Sutton submitted a petition to the Massachusetts General Court in 1783 to argue her right to a pension from the estate of her enslaver Isaac Royall Jr. Ottobah Cugoano, a survivor of the voyage, called it "the brutish, base, but fashionable way of traffic" (Gates and Anderson 1998: 369). Without ventilation or sufficient water, about 15% grew sick and died. The Middle Passage itself lasted roughly 80 days on ships ranging from small schooners to massive, purpose-built "slave ships." Ship crews packed humans together on or below decks without space to sit up or move around.
Between 17, the most active years of the international slave trade, merchants transported around 40% of enslaved Africans in British and American ships.
From 1560 to 1850, about 4.8 million enslaved people were transported to Brazil 4.7 million were sent to the Caribbean and at least 388,000, or 4% of those who survived the Middle Passage, arrived in North America. The most common routes formed what is now known as the "Triangle Trade," connecting Europe, Africa, and the Americas. While frequently recognized as a place of debate and protest during the American Revolution and subsequent social revolutions, this building also serves as a reminder of the wealth amassed by the port city of Boston from the Transatlantic trade, which included the selling of enslaved Africans.įrom the 1500s to the 1800s, merchants transported approximately 12 million Africans across the Atlantic as human property. Boston's "Cradle of Liberty," Faneuil Hall, stands only steps away from sites where merchants sold enslaved Africans whom they had trafficked across the Middle Passage from West Africa to North America.
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