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The Horse and Slave Trade Between the Western Sahara and Senegambia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2009

James L. A. Webb Jr
James L. A. Webb Jr
Affiliation:
Colby College, Waterville
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Extract

Following the late fifteenth- and sixteenth-century cavalry revolution in Senegambia, the horse and slave trade became a major sector of the desert-edge political economy. Black African states imported horses from North Africa and the western Sahara in exchange for slaves. Over time, under conditions of increasing aridity, the zone of desert horse-breeding was pushed south, and through crossbreeding with the small disease-resistant indigenous horses of the savanna, new breeds were created. Although the savanna remained an epidemiologically hostile environment for the larger and more desirable horses bred in North Africa, in the high desert and along the desert fringe, Black African states continued to import horses in exchange for slaves into the period of French colonial rule.

The evidence assembled on the horse trade into northern Senegambia raises the difficult issue of the relative quantitative importance of the Atlantic and Saharan/North African slave trades and calls into question the assumption that the Atlantic slave trade was the larger of the two. Most available evidence concerns the Wolof kingdoms of Waalo and Kajoor. It suggests that the volume of slaves exported north into the desert from Waalo in the late seventeenth century was probably at least ten times as great as the volume of slaves exported into the Atlantic slave trade. For both Waalo and Kajoor, this ratio declined during the first half of the eighteenth century as slave exports into the Atlantic markets increased. The second half of the eighteenth century saw an increase in predatory raiding from the desert which produced an additional flow of north-bound slaves. For Waalo and Kajoor – and probably for the other Black African states of northern Senegambia – the flow of slaves north to Saharan and North African markets probably remained the larger of the two export volumes over the eighteenth century. This northward flow of slaves continued strong after the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade and was only shut down with the imposition of French colonial authority.

Type
Economics and Politics of Slaving in the Sahel
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 34 , Issue 2 , July 1993 , pp. 221 - 246
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1993

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References

1 The author would like to thank George Brooks, Robin Law, François Manchuelle, David Robinson, Jean-Loup Amselle and the participants in his EHESS seminar, and the panelists and audience at the Panel on the Political and Military History of the Senegal River Valley at the 1991 African Studies Association annual meeting for their comments on earlier versions of this paper.

2 For a periodization of climatic change in western Africa which postulates a wetter period beginning in 1500 and lasting until 1630 and a drier period from 1630 to 1860, see Brooks, George E., ‘A provisional historical schema for Western Africa based on seven climate periods’, Cah. Ét. Afr., XXVI (1986), 43–62.Google Scholar

3 Many authors have assumed, probably correctly, that the principal threat to the imported horses was trypanosomiasis. There were, however, other equine diseases of the savanna including tetanus, piroplasmosis, typho-malaria, glanders and lymphangitis that contributed to the decimation of this horse stock. Surprisingly, even for the indigenous, self-reproducing horse populations of the upper Senegal–Niger basin, in the early twentieth century the average lifespan was a mere eight years. For a discussion of the various maladies which affected horses in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, see Pierre, C., L'élevage dans l'Afrique Occidentale Française (Paris, 1906), 235–55Google Scholar, and Meniaud, Jacques, Le Haut-Sénégal-Niger, tome II: Géographie économique (Paris, 1912), 122–33.Google Scholar

4 The early evidence suggesting trypanosomiasis is as follows. Cadamosto reported that horses imported into the Wolof country between the Senegal and Gambia rivers could not survive ‘because of the great heat’ and because they were afflicted with a disease which made them grow ‘so fat that… they are unable to make water and so burst,’ according to Robin Law a description which suggests symptoms caused by Trypanosoma brucei. Law, Robin, The Horse in West African History (Oxford, 1980), 78.Google Scholar Inferential evidence may be adduced from climatic change. Over time increasing aridity caused the southward extension of the desert edge. Drier climate meant less underbrush and thus far less favorable conditions for the propagation of the tsetse fly.

5 Some early writers drew distinctions between Arab and Barbary breeds. Students of the biology of the horse draw no such distinctions, arguing that the Arab and Barbary are one and the same. In this paper, the terms Arab and Barbary are used interchangeably. The direct evidence on horse mortality in West Africa before the twentieth century for other than pure Barbary horses is fragmentary and vague. Law, , Horse, 76–82.Google Scholar

6 See, for example, Carrère, Frederic and Holle, Paul, De la Sénégambie française (Paris, 1855). 74.Google Scholar

7 Robin Law argued that horse-breeding was established in the Senegambia by the end of the sixteenth century, but he based this argument solely on the fact that the Portuguese stopped importing horses at this time. Law, , Horse, 29–30, 49–53.Google Scholar

8 Curtin, Philip D., Economic Change in Precolonial Africa: Senegambia in the Era of the Slave Trade (2 vols.) (Madison, 1975), i, 222.Google Scholar Curtin noted that high prices were occasionally paid for exceptional animals and likened this to European and American patterns of horse-ownership.

9 Among the most influential views has been that of Boubacar Barry, expressed in his study of Waalo before French conquest and in his more recent synthesis of Senegambian history. According to Barry, the trade in horses and in slaves from the Sahara and North Africa was in some measure in competition with the Atlantic trade for slaves until the last quarter of the seventeenth century, when it was eclipsed by the failure of the jihad of Nasir al-Din. For Barry, the failed jihad represented the victory of the desert warriors over the desert clerics. It disrupted the flow of trans-Saharan trade and allowed slaves produced in warfare and in pillage to be funnelled toward entrepôts on the Atlantic coast, rather than north to the Maghrib. Barry, Boubacar, Le Royaume du Waalo (Paris, 1972), 157–8Google Scholar, and La Sénégambie du XVe au XIXe siècle: traite négrière, Islam, et conquête coloniale (Paris, 1988)Google Scholar, passim. See also Suret-Canale, Jean, ‘The Western Atlantic coast 1600– 1800’, in Ajayi, J. F. A. and Crowder, Michael (eds.), History of West Africa, (2 vols.) (New York, 1971–1974), i, 387–440Google Scholar; Becker, Charles and Martin, Victor, ‘Kayor et Baol: royaumes sénégalais et traite des esclaves au XVIIIe siècle’, Revue Française d'Histoire d'Outre-Mer, LXII (1975), 270–300.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10 Doutressoule, Georges, L'élevage en Afrique Occidentale Française (Paris, 1947), 238–9.Google Scholar

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12 Fisher, Humphrey J., ‘“He swalloweth the ground with fierceness and rage”: the horse in the Central Sudan, I. Its introduction’,J. Afr. Hist., XIII (1972), 369–88Google Scholar, and ‘…II. Its use’, J. Afr. Hist., xiv (1973), 355–79Google Scholar; Law, Horse, passim.

13 Fernandes, Valentim, Description de la côte d'Afrique de Ceuta au Sénégal (1506–1507), eds de Cenival, P. and Monod, Théodore (Paris, 1938), 71Google Scholar, cited by Boulègue, Jean, Le Grand Jolof (XHIe–XVIe siècle) (Paris, 1987), 88.Google Scholar

14 Africanus, Leo, Africa (London, 1660)Google Scholar, Book VI: ‘Of Numidia’, reproduced in Moore, Francis, Travels into the Interior of Africa (London, 1738)Google Scholar, ‘Translations from Writers’, 64. The English translation is at considerable variance with the more authoritative French translation. Compare with Jean-Léon L'Africain, Description de l'Afrique, trans, by Épaulard, A. and annotated by A. Épaulard, Th. Monod, H. Lhote and R. (2, vols.) (Paris, 1956), ii, 433.Google Scholar

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18 Crone, Gerald Roe (ed. and trans.), The Voyages of Cadamosto and Other Documents on Western Africa in the Second Half of the Fifteenth Century (London, 1937), 78.Google Scholar

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20 Crone, , Voyages of Cadamosto, 30, 33Google Scholar, cited in Law, , Horse, 52–3.Google Scholar

21 Elbl, , ‘Horse’, 93Google Scholar.

22 Fernandes, , Description, 7Google Scholar, and Pereira, Duarte Pacheco, Esmeraldo de situ orbis, trans. Mauny, Raymond (Bissau, 1956), 51Google Scholar, cited by Law, , Horse, 11, 52–3.Google Scholar Evidence for the scarcity of horses in the desert itself in the fourteenth century can be found in Khaldun's, IbnHistoire des Berbères (Paris, 1968/1969), 331–2.Google Scholar In discussing the Berbers of the western Sahara, Ibn Khaldun remarks, ‘Only a few horses are to be seen amongst them’. A passage from this work by Ibn Khaldun appears in Norris, H. T., The Arab Conquest of the Western Sahara (London, 1986), 28–9.Google Scholar Jean Boulègue has suggested that the figures may refer to the larger Wolof region. See his Le Grand Jolof, 48, 72–3.

23 Pierre, , L'élevage dans l'A.O.F., 56–7.Google Scholar Pierre indicated that there were three types of stirrups found in the A.O.F.: the Arab stirrup, the Hausa stirrup and a stirrup used by the horsemen of Masina which resembled the French military issue. On the introduction of the stirrup to West Africa, see Law, , Horse, 91.Google Scholar

24 The argument that the large horse-cavalries noted by early sixteenth-century Portuguese observers must have been supplied by desert traders first appeared in Webb, James L. A. Jr., ‘Shifting sands: an economic history of the Mauritanian Sahara, 1500–1850’ (Ph.D. thesis, The Johns Hopkins University, 1984), 88–91.Google Scholar During the late fifteenth century, Portuguese traders established themselves along the Saharan and Senegambian coasts. These traders were closer to the Atlantic provinces than to the metropolitan center of empire, and over the course of the century the local élite traded slaves and local produce to the Portuguese in return for the horses that the Portuguese stabled aboard their ships, and this trade may have helped strengthen the military position of the coastal provinces in relation to the core of the empire. Boulègue, Jean, Le Grand Jolof, 155–73.Google Scholar Recently, Ivana Elbl has argued that this horse trade could not have been decisive in the shift of political power taking place in fifteenth-century Senegambia. Elbl, , ‘Horse’, 99–103Google Scholar.

25 Soh, Siré Abbas, Chroniques du Fouta sénégalais (Paris, 1913), 26.Google Scholar

26 Boulégue, , Le Grand Jolof, 155–73, esp. 156–62.Google Scholar

27 Doutressoule, , L'élevage en A.O.F., 253, 260.Google Scholar

28 Dubie, Paul, L'élevage en Mauritanie (Mémoire no. 561, Centre de Hautes Études d'Administration Musulmane, 01 1937), 17.Google Scholar In Dubie's system of categorization the horse of Fuuta was the Mbayar. Pierre identified eight principal ‘families’ of the river horses. Pierre, , L'élevage, 30.Google Scholar

29 A. Cligny, ‘Faune du Sénégal et de la Casamance’, in DrLasnet, , Cligny, A., Chevalier, Aug. and Rambaud, Pierre, Une mission au Sénégal (Paris, 1900), 278–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

30 Doutressoule, , L'élevage en A.O.F., 240.Google Scholar The categorization of the pony herds of Senegambia as discrete from those of western Mali is somewhat contested. Elbl follows Hellmut Epstein's argument in his work The Origin of the Domestic Animals of Africa (2 vols.) (New York, 1971)Google Scholar, that all of the small horses in the western savanna came from the same stock. Epstein in his accomplished survey was, however, simply synthesizing more detailed studies, and for the Senegambia and French Soudan the sources cited are the works of Doutressoule and Pierre, who held that the horse stocks of the Senegambian corridor and the Malian savanna were distinct.

31 Archives Nationales de France, Section Outre Mer [hereafter ANFSOM], Sénégal et dépendances II, dossier 2: Notes sur le fleuve et la Colonie du Sénégal recueillies en 1817 et 1818, M. Laplace.

32 Both desert and savanna peoples attached great prestige to the ownership of horses. In the desert, this was most evident in the sale of prized horses. It was common at these sales to record the horses’ pedigrees, figured matrilineally, in the bill of sale, and the better horses were so expensive that negotiable shares of ownership rather than the horse itself were sold. Partial ownership might entitle the purchaser to ride the horse into battle or in a raid, and to partial ownership of the foal. For exceptional horses, a share of one-quarter or one-eighth could sell for as much as one hundred milch camels. Interviews with Muhammad Ahmad wuld Mshiykh, 22 February 1981, at Nouakchott, 3–4, and with Mokhtar wuld Hamidun, 19 December 1980, at Nouakchott, 4; Law, , Horse, 46.Google Scholar At these prices, the best horses were clearly a luxury and an emblem of nobility. But in principle, even at exorbitant prices, the skilful warrior could recoup his investment in one or more successful raids.

33 Pierre, , L'élevage, 35Google Scholar; Doutressoule, , L'élevage en A.O.F., 243.Google Scholar By the twentieth century, the Moors of the Hawd were selling colts to the Black African communities in the upper river region. Farther east, the pattern was reversed. Sedentary communities sold horses to the Twareg, Tukulor and Fuulbe, who raised few horses of their own. Doutressoule, G., L'élevage au Soudan François (Paris, 1948), 220.Google Scholar

34 Leger, Marcel and Teppaz, L., ‘Le “Horse-Sickness” au Sénégal et au Soudan Français’, Bulletin du Comité des Études Historiques et Scientifiques de l'A.O.F., V (1922), 219–40.Google Scholar

35 Pierre, , L'élevage, 80, 84.Google Scholar

36 Moore, , Travels, 63.Google Scholar Horses from the Cape Verde islands were exported to Senegambia from the late fifteenth century into the first half of the eighteenth century. See Brooks, George E., Landlords and Strangers: A History of Western Africa, 1000–1630 (Boulder, 1992), ch. 10.Google Scholar But there is little or no evidence of the volume of horses exported from the islands, and the trade was apparently a minor one. See Duncan, T. Bentley, Atlantic Islands: Madeira, the Azores, and the Cape Verdes in Seventeenth-Century Commerce and Navigation (Chicago, 1972).Google Scholar

37 Curtin, , Economic Change, i, 222Google Scholar; Brooks, George E., Western Africa to c. 1860 A.D.: a Provisional Historical Schema Based on Climate Periods (Bloomington, 1985), 82–3.Google Scholar In fact, Moore's account does not indicate whether desert suppliers provided almost exclusively stallions for the southern trades, only that the Wolof supplied stallions to their clients to the south.

38 Catholique, Mission, Guide de conversation, 63.Google Scholar

39 In the mid-twentieth century, Doutressoule noted that among sedentary peoples in the A.O.F., stallions were reserved principally for the chiefs. L'élevage en A.O.F., 65.

40 Chambonneau, in Ritchie, Carson I. A., ‘Deux textes sur le Sénégal (1673–1677)’, Bull. de l'I.F.A.N., série B, XXX (1968), 332–3Google Scholar; Barbot, Jean, A Description of the Coasts of North and South Guinea (London, 1732), 38, 57–8Google Scholar; Cultru, Pierre (ed.), Premier voiage du Sieur de la Courbe fait à la coste d'Afrique en 1685 (Paris, 1913), 126Google Scholar; Labat, J.-B., Nouvelle relation de l'Afrique occidentale (5 vols.) (Paris, 1728), iii, 68, 235.Google Scholar

41 Interview with Mokhtar wuld Hamidun, 19 December 1980, at Nouakchott, 4. Harry T. Norris, summarizing the account of Muhammad al-Yadali, also writes that during the war of Shurbubba both zwaya and hassani rode on horseback. Norris, , Arab Conquest, 36.Google Scholar

42 Stone, Thora G., ‘The journey of Cornelius Hodges in Senegambia, 1689–90’, English Historical Review, XXXIX (1924), 93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

43 Cultru, , Premier voiage du Sieur de la Courbe, 146Google Scholar: ‘Ceux cy [the desert people] portent les cheveux longs et tressez par derrière, s'habillent a la mainiere des negres, vont toujours teste nuë et sont armez de longues piques et de sagayes; ils sont grand maquignons et nourissent beaucoup de chevaux qu'ils troquent avec les negres contre les captifs qu'ils vont apres vendre bien loing dans les terres.’

44 Labat, , Nouvelle relation, iii, 234–5.Google Scholar Gaspard Théodore Mollien noted that the royal stable of the Darnel of Kajoor was stocked with pure Arab horses at the time of his travels in 1818. Mollien, , L'Afrique occidentale en 1818 (repr. Paris, 1967), 40–1.Google Scholar

45 Barbot, , Description of the Coasts, 39.Google Scholar Somewhat surprisingly, the substitute for the horse in use in Jolof was the camel, also imported from the desert. Unfortunately, Europeans rarely commented upon this trade in camels.

46 ‘“Brak” est des plus puissants du pays, il peut avoir 4 à 5000 hommes capables de porter les armes dont près de la moitié en cavalerie.’ Fonds français 9557, Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, Mémoire sur les mines de Bambouc, 30 November 1762, cited by Barry, , Waalo, 202.Google Scholar This was, of course, near the end of Waalo's regional military presence. Additional confirmation of the rise of regional military capability of the state of Kajoor may be found in a British document from the early nineteenth century. In 1811 Lieutenant Colonel Maxwell, the Lieutenant Governor of Senegal, related to a commission of inquiry that the present Darnel was not as powerful as his predecessors but that the Darnel could still field 5,000 or 6,000 men in an emergency. One of the Darnel's predecessors was said to have brought 5,000 cavalry to bear upon a rebellion in Kajoor, presumably in the eighteenth century, although no date was mentioned. Public Record Office, London (PRO), CO 267/29 Answers to the Questions proposed to Lt Colonel Maxwell, Lieutenant Governor of Senegal and Goree by his Majesty's Commissioner for Investigating the Forts and Settlements in Africa, 1 January 1811.

47 ‘Relation du Sieur Chambonneau, commis de la compagnie de Sénégal, du voyage par luy fait en remontant le Niger (juillet 1688),’ Bulletin de Géographie Historique et Descriptive, II (1898), 309.Google Scholar The trading relationship between the desert and savanna peoples was symbolized by the ritual exchange of a horse for a slave that took place between the Trarza emir and the Brak of Waalo. Cultru, , Premier voiage du Sieur de la Courbe, 154–5.Google Scholar

48 ‘A French ship, that happened to be then in the road of Porto Dali, on board which was Caseneuve [John Casseneuve, a former shipmate of Barbot], who gave this account, bought 80 slaves of the prisoners of war. The rest of the prisoners the usurper sent towards the country of the Moors, to be exchanged for horses, to mount his cavalry.’ Barbot, , Description of the Coasts, 425.Google Scholar For further evidence on this conflict between Baol and Kajoor (not mentioned in oral tradition), see Martin, Victor and Becker, Charles, ‘Les Teeñ du Baol: Essai de chronologie’, Bulletin de l'I.F.A.N., série B, XXXVIII (1976), 479.Google Scholar

49 Archives Nationales de France (hereafter, ANF), C6 11, Rapport de 14 Juin 1736, David Langlois de la Bord (?) [name only marginally legible]: ‘Il s'en fait peu de Captifs en Riviere cette année, Brak a fait 5 à 6 efforts qui n'ont rien produit, la plus part a passé entre les mains des Maures pour leur chevaux; nous voulons tenter cette haute saison le Commerce des Chevaux avec St. Yago et pour peu qu'il apporte de profit, nous le continuerons pour le partager auprès des Roys negres avec les Maures.' The French company, however, aborted this initiative, fearing that it was simply a means to increase opportunities for private trade. French traders, however, were bringing at least a few horses from the Cap Verde islands into southern Senegambia destined for the Darnel and Teeñ at this time. See ANF, C6 10, letter of April 1731, Comptoir d'Albreda.

50 By way of negative evidence, Doumet makes no mention of any horse-breeding by the Darnel. His description of the Darnel's military force for state warfare indicates that a military draft in Kajoor would produce a diverse group of poorly armed conscripts on foot and that the Damel, by contrast, would be looked after by his cavalry, with himself at the head (although the cavalry stayed at the rear of aggressive actions). Doumet, in Becker, Charles and Martin, Victor, ‘Mémoire inédit de Doumet (1769): le Kayor et les pays voisins au cours de la seconde moitié du XVIIe siècle’, Bull. de l'I.F.A.N., série B, XXXVI (1974), 39.Google Scholar

51 This route was used annually by the Idaw al-Hajj (who were known to the Europeans as the Darmankour), the zwaya grouping which dominated the trade in gum arabic. According to an account of the 1780s, the Idaw al Hajj moved north to the Atlas mountains from August to December or January. Gum arabic moved north on these caravans, which probably indicates that it was a ballast trade; the slaves who made the trans-Saharan journey did so on foot. See ANFSOM D.F.C. Sénégal 82, no. 75, Mémoire sur la traite de la gomme au Sénégal, August 1783, M. Eyries. The author of this mémoire reported that the marabouts (Darmankour) went to the mountains of Morocco each year after the gum trade. Another report of yearly expeditions to Marrakish by the Darmankour as well as their detailed coastal route was published by Roger, M. Baron le, in ‘Résultat des questions adressées au nommé Mboula, marabout maure, de Tischit, et à; un nègre de Walet, qui l'accompagnait,’ Recueil des voyages et de mémoires de la Société de Géographie de Paris, II (1825), 60–1.Google Scholar An anonymous author of a French mémoire dated 1803 indicates that a desert route from Senegal to Morocco was open and in frequent use. ANFSOM, D.F.C. Sénégal et dépendances, carton 83, no. 105, Des Peuples qui habitent les Côtes du Sénégal et les bords de ce Fleuve, Des Royaumes sur la côte de Gorée, Cayor, Baol, Sin et Salum. Further evidence of a coastal route from Wad Nun south to Senegal may be adduced from Beaumier, auguste, ‘Le choléra au Maroc: sa marche au Sahara jusqu'au Sénégal, en 1868’, Bulletin de la Société de Géographie, 6ème série, III (1872), 303–4Google Scholar; for evidence of a route from Wad Nun down the Atlantic coast and across the desert frontier, see the account of the Moroccan merchant Sidi Hamet in Riley, James, An Authentic Narrative of the Loss of the American Brig Commerce (New York, 1847), 160–3.Google Scholar

52 Doumet, , ‘Mémoire’, 44Google Scholar.

53 James F. Searing has estimated that in the period 1760–90 approximately 200–300 slaves per annum were exported from the region of the lower Senegal, through Saint Louis and Gorée. The lower Senegal, for Searing, would include Waalo, Kajoor and Bawol. Searing, James F., ‘Door of No Return’ (unpublished book manuscript), ch. 2.Google Scholar The estimate of 100–200 slaves exported per annum from Kajoor is my own based on Searing's figures.

54 Doumet, ,‘Mémoire’, 44Google Scholar. According to a mid-nineteenth century account, the Darnel received two-thirds of the plunder from pillaging but only one-half of that gathered in warfare. Carrère, and Holle, , De la Sénégambie française, 72.Google Scholar

55 As the French administrator Jean-Gabriel Pelletan observed: ‘The blacks value highly the horses of the Moors. I have seen black Princes give up to ten or twelve slaves for a horse, and make a raid expressly for the purpose of paying for the horse.’ Pelletan, Jean-Gabriel, Mémoire sur la colonie française du Sénégal et ses dépendances (Paris, An IX), 55 n. 11.Google Scholar Thus through political violence guns and horses found their way into the hands of slave warriors and nobles throughout Kajoor. According to a mid-nineteenth century account, the Darnel exercised a sovereign control over the supply of gunpowder, doling it out to his subordinates just before political violence was to be initiated. Carrère, and Holle, , De la Sénégambie française, 71–2.Google Scholar

56 Interviews with Mokhtar wuld Hamidun, ii April 1981, at Nouakchott, 1–2, and with Ahmad Baba wuld Shaykh, March 1982, at Nouakchott, 17–18; Marty, Paul, L'émirat des Trarzas (Paris, 1919), 80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar The period of years during which this right to pillage (with the accord of the Darnel) was in force is not known.

57 See, for example, Lamiral, Dominique Harcourt, L'Affrique et le peuple affriquain (Paris, 1789), 237–65Google Scholar; ANFSOM D.F.C. Sénégal 82, no. 82, Côtes d'Afrique: Traite des noires, Par M. de la Jaille, 2 June 1784, ff. 27–8.

58 ‘Ils sont marchands; ils exécutent de très-grands voyages dans le Zaarha qu'ils traversent dans toutes les directions; ils font des pillages d'esclaves sur les bords du Sénéegal et du Niger, et ils vont les vendre sur les rivages de la mer Méditerranée…’ de Golberry, Silv. Meinard Xavier, Fragmens d'un voyage, en Afrique (2 vols.) (Paris, An X), 1, 301–2.Google Scholar

59 ‘Le Roy Dámel me dit un Jour Chez Luy a Chajort [Kajoor]. Je Luy disois tu ne fais plus autant de Captifs que Les autres fois, il me fit repondre Je Vais t'Expliquer pourquoy; C'est qu'apresent Je reçois pour un ceque Je reçevois autrefois pour Cinq… il me fit entrevoir que nous Etions des duppes de payer Les Captifs 120 Barres qui est le prix actuel Toutes ces raisons se Passerent Chez Luy Dans Un Voyage que je fit en 1775. Lieu situé a 60 Lieues Du Bord de La Mer.’ ANF C6 17, 12 May 1781, Capitaine Guiof. A similar view of the behavior of the Darnel can be found in ANF, C6 18, Remarques: Etat et aperçu des esclaves qui peuvent retirer les Nations de l'Europe de la Côte Occidentale d'Afrique. 1783 [unsigned]: ‘…celui de Cayor ne se déterminant à faire des pillages que quand il en a de grands besoins.’

60 de Pommegorge, Pruneau, Description de la Nigritie (Paris, 1789), 16–17.Google Scholar

61 As the Brak of Waalo wrote plaintively to the French governor Schmaltz: ‘aidez nous à acheter des chevaux dont nous avons grand besoin pour repousser les attaques de l'enemi, car vous devez le savoir, il nous est impossible de rien faire sans chevaux’. See the letter from the Brak to Schmaltz quoted in ANFSOM, Sénégal II, dossier 2, Mémoire Sur l'Etat de la Colonie du Sénégal jusqu'au dix Septembre 1819, P. Valentin, habitant de St. Louis (Sénégal).

62 PRO, CO 267/29 Answers to the Questions proposed to Lieutenant Colonel Maxwell… 1 January 1811.

63 Mollien noted that when he visited Ganjool, the town had the appearance of having been recently pillaged. The huts were burned, and much of the population had fled. The Damel of Kajoor had come demanding that the village offer up 83 slaves to him. Mollien, , L'Afrique occidentale en 1818, 39–40, 48Google Scholar, and (for the quoted and translated text) 76.

64 Ibid. 75; ANFSOM, D.F.C. Sénégal, carton 83, no. 147, Rapport de M. de Mackou…16 mars 1820.

65 ANFSOM, Sénégal et dependances XIII, dossier 32, Bancal, P. et al. , ‘Deuxième pétition adressée à M. le Gouverneur du Sénégal’, Saint-Louis, 11 02 1854, p. 6.Google Scholar Even by the mid-nineteenth century, full-sized horses, used by the chiefs, continued to be led into Kajoor by desert traders. Carrére, and Holle, , De la Sénégambie française, 74.Google Scholar

66 According to this account, ‘…the people of El Giblah [Gibla] sometimes go far to the southward…whence the Arabs obtain black slaves, in the proportion of 3 or 4 slaves for each horse. These slaves are sold again at Wadnoon [Wad Nun]’. Rennell, Major, ‘An account of the captivity of Alexander Scott among the wandering Arabs of the Great African Desert’, Edinburgh Philosophical Journal, IV (1821), 229.Google Scholar

67 Faidherbe, Louis, ‘Renseignements géographiques sur la partie du Sahara comprise entre l'oued Noun et le Soudan’, Nouvelles Annates de Voyage, 6ème série, V (1859), 146–7.Google Scholar These other 75 horses were likely also sold for Black slaves, but these slaves do not figure in the calculations which follow.

68 Faidherbe, Louis, ‘Les Berbères et les Arabes des bords du Sénégal’ Bull. de la Société de Géographie, 4 èrne série (1854), 100.Google Scholar Although beyond the scope of the present article, it is important to note that religious teachings were sometimes exported south along with the horses, and at least on one occasion the horse and slave trade was linked to the establishment of a religious center in Senegambia. In one celebrated instance Shaykh Bu Naama, the father of Shaykh Bu Kunta, went to Kajoor in the early nineteenth century to sell horses, on the order of Shaykh Sidi Lamin, a disciple of Shaykh Sidi al-Mokhtar al-Kunti. According to Kunta tradition, Shaykh Bu Naama was shocked at the spiritual condition of the people of Kajoor and received permission to settle there. And thus the desert horse trade figured in the establishment of the Bu Kunta settlement near Thiès in southern Kajoor. See Marty, Paul, ‘Le groupement du Bou Kounta’, Revue du Monde Musulman, XXXI (1915/1916), 415.Google Scholar

69 Webb, James L. A. Jr, ‘The trade in gum arabic: prelude to French conquest in Senegal’, J. Afr. Hist., XXVI (1985), 149–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

70 Faidherbe, , ‘Renseignements géographiques sur la partie du Sahara…’, 143–4Google Scholar: ‘Les Marabouts du Tiris, de l'Adrar et des Trarzas viennent acheter des esclaves dans le Cayor en échange de leurs chevaux et les emmènent au Maroc. Cette immigration, qui tend à dépeupler notre colonie, cessera bientôt, grâce à notre situation au Sénégal.’

71 ANFSOM, Sénégal II, dossier 4, La Colonie du Sénégal et des dépendances, A. Vallon, 12 August 1861.

72 Doutressoule, , L'élevage au Soudan Français, 220Google Scholar; L'élevage en A.O.F., 64, 245.

73 Robinson, David, Chiefs and Clerics: The History of Abdul Bokar Kan and Futa Toro 1853–1891 (Oxford, 1975), 122.Google Scholar

74 ANS, iG 310, Kayes, Renseignements historiques, géographiques, et économiques sur le cercle de Kayes, 30 March 1904. I would like to thank François Manchuelle for communicating this reference to me.

75 Pierre, , L'élevage, 79–80.Google Scholar