What I’m trying to ask is, if the slave trade develop in order to bring slave labor to America, de facto viewing the subjects brought across the ocean as inferior (I’m guessing due to skin color and cultural differences) why did it not develop with the indigenous people in the americas as well? They were different colors skin and culturally different, and it wouldn’t have required transporting millions of people across a very large ocean.
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It sort of did, there were absolutely indigenous slaves.
I think 3 aspects you can’t ignore are –
1) Indigenous peoples were more self-sufficient in their back yards. They could more easily escape and survive back in their homes. African slaves had nothing to attract them to escape (other than almost certain death) so it was easier to keep them docile.
2) Black slaves were pretty cheap and easy to get, they had a set up a system where groups in Africa were capturing the slaves themselves, gathering them all up and then selling to the Europeans. It’s not like they were hunting for black people in the woods of Africa, the Africans were selling themselves to Europeans in large groups.
3) Disease tolerance – This is complex one but European diseases wiped out unimaginable quantities of indigenous Americans. There was a prevailing belief up through even the late 1800’s that African people were immune to most diseases and were thus made the best slaves.
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