The Portuguese began exploring the west coast of Africa shortly before
Christopher Columbus was born; and no sooner did they encounter negroes
than they began to seize and carry them in captivity to Lisbon. The court
chronicler Azurara set himself in 1452, at the command of Prince Henry, to
record the valiant exploits of the negro-catchers. Reflecting the spirit
of the time, he praised them as crusaders bringing savage heathen for
conversion to civilization and christianity. He gently lamented the
massacre and sufferings involved, but thought them infinitely outweighed by
the salvation of souls. This cheerful spirit of solace was destined long to
prevail among white peoples when contemplating the hardships of the colored
races. But Azurara was more than a moralizing annalist. He acutely observed
of the first cargo of captives brought from southward of the Sahara, less
than a decade before his writing, that after coming to Portugal "they never
more tried to fly, but rather in time forgot all about their own country,"
that "they were very loyal and obedient servants, without malice"; and that
"after they began to use clothing they were for the most part very fond of
display, so that they took great delight in robes of showy colors, and such
was their love of finery that they picked up the rags that fell from the
coats of other people of the country and sewed them on their own garments,
taking great pleasure in these, as though it were matter of some greater
perfection."[1] These few broad strokes would portray with equally happy
precision a myriad other black servants born centuries after the writer's
death and dwelling in a continent of whose existence he never dreamed.
Azurara wrote further that while some of the captives were not able to
endure the change and died happily as Christians, the others, dispersed
among Portuguese households, so ingratiated themselves that many were
set free and some were married to men and women of the land and acquired
comfortable estates. This may have been an earnest of future conditions in