Why early American plantation owners preferred to import African slaves vs enslaving indigenous people.

Question

Why early American plantation owners preferred to import African slaves vs enslaving indigenous people.

In: Economics

Answer 1

There were a lot of factors but I’ll mention a couple of big ones

1) Disease had wiped out a huge number of the native population, making it difficult to rely on them as a labor force.

2) The remaining natives were spread out over huge areas, keenly aware of the land, and liable to band together in retaliation if numbers of them were taken by force.

3) Africans already had skills in agriculture, were accustomed to the hot climates of the Caribbean and American south, and carried more resistance to diseases the Europeans carried.

4) The Transatlantic Slave Trade was already an established system with relatively cheap prices. A constant supply of human labor was already existent.