the Mound Builders and in Mexican temples.[1] Secondly, there are evidences of Negro customs among the Indians in their religious worship; in their methods of building defenses such as the mounds probably were; and particularly in customs of trade. Columbus said that he had been told of a land southwest of the Cape Verde Islands where the black folk had been trading and had used in their trade the well known African alloy of gold called guanin.[2]
“There can be no question whatever as to the reality of the statement in regard to the presence in America of the African pombeiros[3] previous to Columbus because the guani is a Mandingo word and the very alloy is of African origin. In 1501 a law was passed forbidding persons to sell guanin to the Indians of Hispaniola.”[4]
Wiener thinks “The presence of Negroes with their trading masters in America before Columbus is proved by the representation of Negroes in
- ↑ Cf. Wiener, Africa and the Discovery of America, Vol. I, pp. 169–70, 172, 174–5; Vol. 3, p. 322; Thurston, Antiquities of Tennessee, etc., 1890, p. 105; De Charnay, Ancient Cities of the New World (trans. by Gonino and Conant, 1887), pp. 132ff.; Kabell, America for Columbus, 1892, p. 235.
- ↑ J. B. Thacher, Christopher Columbus, I903, Vol. 2, pp. 379–80; Raccolta di documentl e studi publicati dalla R. Commissione Colombiana pel quorto centenario dalla scoperta dell′ America, parte I, Rome, 1892, Vol. I, p. 96.
- ↑ i. e., Negro Traders.
- ↑ Thacher. Vol. 2, pp. 379, 380; Wiener, Vol. 2, pp. 116–17.
