As anthropologist Leland Donald pointed out in his landmark 1997 work, Aboriginal Slavery on the Northwest Coast of North America, slaves played important roles as labourers, status symbols, and trade commodities throughout the Northwest Coast culture area. Slaves were sometimes captives taken in warfare and rendered into chattel, but many were also born into slavery. Chiefs were known to slaughter slaves in ritual displays of wealth, or in marking important community events, such as the raising of a heraldic pole.
Henry Laurens, who would later
succeed John Hancock as president
of the Continental Congress,
ran the largest slave trading house
in North America. In the 1750s
alone, his Charleston firm oversaw
the sale of more than 8,000
enslaved Africans. He donated
£50 to the endowment campaign.
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