Slavery in Medieval and Early Modern Iberia. William D. Phillips, Jr.

in the islands. For a short period after the first Spanish contact with the Americas, Indians were sold in the Canaries. Their numbers were always few, and the trade soon stopped when the Spanish monarchs outlawed slave trade in Indians.

      Black African, Muslim, and Morisco slaves came to constitute a significant component among the work force in the Canaries. The settlers in the Canaries acquired imported slaves in a variety of ways. Some slaves, who had already spent time in Spain, accompanied their Spanish owners when they migrated to the Canaries. Portuguese merchants sold others from their ships as they stopped in the Canaries on their return voyages from West Africa. Castilians competed with Portuguese in the trade, especially during the war between Castile and Portugal from 1474 to 1478. By the treaties ending that war in 1479, Portugal received a monopoly on trade with Africa south of the Canary Islands, but illegal Castilian raids continued into the sixteenth century.²⁹ Castilians engaged in raids called cabalgadas mounted from the Canaries, and along the African coast north of Cape Bojador they acquired captives and cattle. Manuel Lobo Cabrera found records for 154 raids from the eastern Canaries during the course of the sixteenth century. The greatest number (87) left from Lanzarote, followed by Gran Canaria with 59. Only 8 left from Fuerteventura. At times, the raiders acquired black slaves directly, although often a more complicated process ensued. Most of the human booty from the raids consisted of Muslims. Some were enslaved, converted, and later freed. Other Muslim captives, those who were able to do so, negotiated for their ransoms, and frequently they paid for their ransoms with variable numbers of black slaves. This became one of the most common means by which sub-Saharan Africans entered the islands.³⁰