The Seasoning Process: African Slaves' Transition to Americas

Introduction to the Seasoning Process

How did African slaves receive guidance, physical preparation, and social conditioning — collectively known as "seasoning" — as they were brought from their home continent to the Americas? This paper covers the transition from freedom to slavery, examining how Africans were subjected to a set of systematic processes designed to prepare them for the brutal realities of plantation life in North America. From the moment of capture to their integration into the slave economy, enslaved Africans endured what historians have come to call the seasoning process.

The Five Phases of Seasoning

While no single readily available source explicitly identifies a specific "five phases" of the seasoning process, at least five distinct phases can be identified from the scholarly literature. According to Assistant Professor Brenda E. Stevenson, the first phase of seasoning began "before many [slaves] reached Virginia," referencing the "harsh lessons learned during the Middle Passage." The physical ordeal of the crossing — exposure to new environments and confined, unsanitary conditions — caused many enslaved people to suffer from pneumonia, malaria, smallpox, sickle cell anemia, typhus, worm infestations, whooping cough, dysentery, and "a host of venereal and gynecological ailments" (Stevenson 1996).

A second phase of the seasoning process involved preparation for sale. Enslaved people were bathed so they would appear clean when put up for auction. Male slaves were shaved and wiped down with palm oil so that wounds "from the journey" would be less visible (Tripod). The third phase consisted of meeting the slaveholder who purchased them at auction and being introduced — either by native-born slaves or by experienced, already-seasoned slaves — to field labor, including work with tobacco, rice, wheat, oats, and livestock.

A fourth phase might be described as being "beaten into submission until the new slave broke" (Tripod). A fifth phase is described by R.A. Glasgow in Guyana: Race and Politics among Africans and East Indians: being introduced into plantation culture entailed learning the work, the new language, a new diet, and the social norms of the plantation. Most new slaves were placed in the care of "an experienced Creole slave who looked with a degree of scorn" upon the newly arrived (Glasgow 55).

Nearly every enslaved person was given trousers, a jacket, a shirt, and a hat. The experienced Creole slave also provided food, tobacco, and other necessities, offering a measure of comfort in what was an otherwise shocking and disorienting situation (Glasgow 2012).

Seasoning Sickness and Disease Exposure

In The Slavery Reader, Volume 1, Philip D. Curtin discusses "seasoning sickness," a phenomenon that typically occurred before enslaved people reached North America. Europeans held the belief that since African slaves would eventually contract diseases to which they had no immunity, exposing them to a tropical disease early would help them build resistance. Once they survived that initial illness, there was "the expectation of better health." Planters who had paid for enslaved people believed they would be stronger and live longer after enduring the "seasoning sickness" (Curtin 23).

As a practical consequence, seasoned slaves "commanded higher prices" than those who had just arrived directly off the ships of the Middle Passage (Curtin 23). Curtin further explains that planters in "tropical America" expected slave populations to grow naturally over time, but this expectation proved false. The slave trade was necessary not only to provide labor for harvesting tropical staples, but also simply to "maintain the population level" (Curtin 25).

Conclusion

This paper traces the arrival of enslaved Africans in the Americas, noting that before they boarded slave ships, they were sometimes held in prison-like compounds for up to a year or more. They then crossed the Middle Passage, and those who survived the diseases and brutality of the voyage were subjected to the seasoning process upon arrival.

The journey thus moved in painful stages: from free Africans, to enslaved Africans on the continent, to enslaved passengers on board slave ships, and finally to enslaved laborers in North America or the West Indies — sold at auction and subjected to the often brutal process of seasoning that transformed them into workers within the plantation economy. The shameful history of slavery in the United States stands as a profound stain on this nation's legacy, and it is vital that students engage honestly with the documented realities of this history.

Works Cited

Bear, Storm. "Black History: Inside the Seasoning Camps." Bilerico. 2008.

Curtin, Philip D. "Epidemiology and the Slave Trade." In The Slavery Reader, Volume 1, G. Heuman and J. Walvin, eds. New York: Psychology Press, 2003.

Glasgow, R.A. Guyana: Race and Politics among Africans and East Indians. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer Science & Business Media, 2012.

Mocombe, Paul. The Liberal Black Protestant Heterosexual Bourgeois Male: From W.E.B. Du Bois to Barack Obama. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2010.

Stevenson, Brenda E. Life in Black and White: Family and Community in the Slave South. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.

Tripod. "The Arrival of New Slaves to the Americas." 2003.