from rights over dependents.... By far the most important form of depen-
dent labor was slavery. It was common for travelers to find whole villages of
slaves producing for a master along major trade routes.”
Slave raids were always vicious, but they seem to have developed a
particularly cruel pattern in Calabar. There slave traders mounted expedi-
tions in war canoes, armed even with cannon, up the Cross River to fall
on hapless Igbo and Ibibio villages. Overpowering those they wanted, the
Efik raiders bound or shackled them, and according to an English sailor
who witnessed one event, threw them into the canoes and rushed away
before any sort of defense or pursuit could be organized. Between 1725
and 1775, Calabar alone sold about 80,000 men, women, and children into
slavery.
96 THE BIRTH OF AMERICA