thanks so much for reading.
so I came across this short article and a few other similar ones after a search.
This can't possibly be true? I know slaves in the USA were treated with extreme brutality, but it isn't the horror of it that's silly.
A baby slave had a lot of potential value, much more than a chicken or some other animal they could use to bait gators instead.
The worth of that baby when grown and sold (or kept for work produced) would be way more than whatever they would get from catching a gator.
*disclaimer--Slavery was abhorrant and cruel, when I speak of a slave's 'worth' I hope you know what I mean, not the intrinsic value of every human being.
Holy cow. I had never heard of this before. I did a search of GenealogyBank (they have a large American newspaper database) for the phrase "gator bait." I found a few articles that talked about exceptionally large alligators being caught (around 1900-1910) that mention using a pig leg or a live pig stuck on a hook (poor pig) as bait.
But I also found this article: "Naked Pickaninnies Bait For Alligators; But They Suffer No Serious Effect," Evansville Courier and Press (Evansville, IN), 16 Sept. 1923, p. 15. (It's behind a paywall so I made a copy--sorry its a bit choppy since it's on imgur.) (I just realized--it's a reprint of the same article that's quoted in the last line of the story linked by OP.) It's a sorta tongue-in-cheek, quasi-human interest article (so I'm a bit suspicious of its 100% veracity), but it explains that babies are used as bait by sitting the kid in the shallows of the water and letting it splash and make a lot of happy baby noises that would attract alligators. Honestly it's horrific (no matter how much the author smirks that the kid is happy doing it), but I suspect that was likely how babies were "traditionally" used as bait--if this was ever actually practiced. Alligators didn't eat the kids, but the kids were used to lure the animals.
I am somewhat suspicious of that guy quoted in the article as saying that the kids were actually eaten by alligators for the reasons you mention--setting aside the obvious morality of it, it doesn't make any sense from a monetary perspective. I'd like to see some contemporary evidence corroborating those statements. (Have any researchers out there read anything on this?)
It's not uncommon for stories passed orally from one generation to another to be inadvertently distorted. I suspect that is the case here. I haven't made a study of African-American or slave narratives, but I do study another group of Americans who were badly treated in the past, and it's interesting how the stories that are repeated now by members of that group don't 100% match the historic, contemporary sources--some details are sensationalized, and some details are forgotten. But--as I've stated--I've not made this a matter of study and I'd be very interested to hear if anyone here can give us more details about this bizarre practice. Was it actually a documented practice, or was it sorta a menacing joke?
Generally it would be a good commodity if your slave was healthy. This means naturally that the slave would be treated well to be strong and hard working.
The fact that they were slaves with no rights would allow the brutality you mentioned to happen. It may have happened with something like this existed - http://www.prairieghosts.com/lalaurie.html
Suffice to say something this torturous was very rare. Even Harriet Ann Jacobs documented purpose with the mistreatment. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl is a tragic but worthwhile read if this interests you. It's free to download on an ereader (forgot which one).