Why did Europeans bring African slaves to North America, but not Native American slaves to Africa?

by anonradditor

Further:

Why were native populations in North America generally not enslaved and put to work in North America? Were Africans enslaved by Europeans, but kept in Africa to work in their native land? If so, why not do the same with North American natives and eliminate transportation costs and difficulties?

Were there incidents of European enslavement of North American natives, and if so, why not on the scale of the slaves brought from Africa? Why is it not known about as much as the slave trade from Africa?

(Sorry if the questions are cold in their analysis. Slavery is deeply abhorrent to me, but I nonetheless want to understand it.)

ThinkFact

Here are three major reasons:

  1. African slaves were typically already slaves in Africa. In some parts of Africa human slaves were one of very few forms of wealth during the trans Atlantic slave trade. They were property that the Europeans purchased by means of other goods such as metals and textiles. Not to say kidnapping didn't happen, but it's definitely not as common as most people think. A slave for a slave is not necessarily a good deal especially when considering bringing over slaves to Africa would come at great cost to Native Americans intern affecting the Europeans bringing them over, and essentially it would be pointless when considering there was a vast able bodied population already there.

  2. The "Scramble for Africa" happened extremely late in comparison to the colonization of the Americas. The majority of colonization in The Americas took place between the 1500s and 1600s. Where the colonization of Africa mostly took place in the 1800s. By this time Native American populations would've been so small, and African slave populations in the Americas would've been so big that if they were to have brought slaves over they most likely would've been African slaves.

  3. The Portuguese and more so the Spanish had a very interesting relationship with the native Americans. The Spanish viewed people within territory that the occupy as subjects regardless of ethnicity. Being that a mass majority of immigrants from Spain went to the New World for wealth, it was mostly young men going over and not families themselves. Many Spanish "wealth seekers" married into local native populations. While there was the enslavement of Native Americans, the Spanish "Casta" system extended some protections to Native Americans which Africans who would only have manage to get to the Americas in due to being slaves (in most cases) wouldn't have had. They were protected by royal officials but did tend to be abused by local officials. But, they were allowed to be a part of any economic class so in essence they arguably had more rights.

With that said, Native American populations were dying off so fast that most enslaved populations died off far too quickly. This also brought appeal when it came to African slaves because they had much better immunity to European diseases and slave owners in Africa were willing to trade them for goods.

But every country is so unique in context.

Sources:

Further reading: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casta http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_slave_trade http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scramble_for_Africa