Slaves in the Americas and Caribbean were branded, though not always. Typically, branding occurred during their time on the African coast or by slave traders, rather than the final purchaser or slave master (Thomas, Slave Trade: The Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade, p. 396-7). It was certainly not something that happened to every slave, and it was more prevalent in the Caribbean than in North America. The disparity between the two can largely be attributed to the following:

• There were thousands more slaves imported to the Caribbean than North America.

• The proportion of slaves born in Africa to slaves born in the colonies was far lower in North America. In other words, the slave population of North America was far more Creole than the Caribbean.

A good way to get a sense of what branding took place is to look at runaway advertisements. Luckily, 740 advertisements for runaway slaves were collected and transcribed by Douglas Chambers, and made available online here. If you search for the word "brand" you will see dozens of slaves described either as "not bearing a mark" or describe the letters burned into their skin. The commonality of having "no brand" specifically listed indicates that branding was common enough to mention, even if there was no brand present. While occurring less often in North American slaves, there were certainly slaves in Virginia & South Carolina with branding marks. A quick perusal through Lathan Windley's Runaway Slaves Advertisements and several slaves are listed as bearing brands. An example of a slave branded can also be found here in an advertisement placed by John Finnie for his slave Bacchus, an "African born...19 years of age...has been branded on his hand" (See also, Morgan, Slave Counterpoint pp. 270ff).

Slaves could also be branded as a punishment, typically the letters they were branded with representing their crime. Thus "R" would stand for runaway. This was an old punishment, and had been in use in England for centuries. Famously, religious dissidents like John Naylor had been branded to declare their crime and punish the individuals. Naylor had been branded with a "B” for blaspheme (Braithwaite, Beginnings of Quakerism, p. 262). Older laws regarding branding runaways also applied to whites, but this fell out of during the eighteenth century (EG Henning, Statutes at Large, Virginia, 1:254).