they should be removed from
their pow-wows, and suggests the exchange for negroes, saying: "I doe
not see how wee can thrive vntill wee into gett a stock of slaves
sufficient to doe all our business."

Downing had a personal interest in the gaining of Moors; for he had had
almost as much trouble in obtaining servants as he did in marrying off
his children. We find him and his wife writing to Winthrop for help,
buying Indians, sending home more than once to England for "godlye
skylful paynstakeing girles," beseeching their neighbors to send them
servants "of good caridg and godly conuersation;" and at last buying
negroes, to try in every way to solve the vexed question.

Though the early planters came to New England to obtain and maintain
liberty, and "bond slaverie, villinage," and other feudal servitudes
were prohibited under the ninety-first article of the Body of Liberties,
still they needed but this suggestion of Downing's to adopt quickly what
was then the universal and unquestioned practice of all Christian
nations--slavery. Josselyn found slaves on Noddle's Island in Boston
Harbor at his first visit, though they were not held in a Puritan
family. By 1687 a French refugee wrote home:

"You may also here own Negroes and Negresses, there is not a house
in Boston however small may be its means, that has not one or
two.... Negroes cost from twenty to forty Pistoles."

In Connecticut the crime of man-stealing was made punishable by death;
and in 1646 the Massachusetts General Court awoke to the growing
condition of affairs and bore witness "by the first Optunity, ag't the
hainous & crying sinn of man-stealing," and undertook to send back to
"Gynny" negroes who had been kidnapped by a slaver and brought to New
England, and to send a letter of explanation and apology with them.

Though in the beginning he refused to harbor or tolerate negro-stealers,
the Massachusetts Puritan of that day, enraged at the cruelty of the
savage red men, did not hesitate to sell Indian captives as slaves to
the West Indies. King Philip's wife and child were thus sold and there
died. Their story was told in scathing language by Edward Everett. In
1703 it was made legal to transport and sell in the Barbadoes all Indian
male captives under ten, and Indian women captives. Perhaps these
transactions quickly blunted whatever early feeling may have existed
against negro slavery, for soon the African slave-trade flourished in
Ne