Women for Spoons, Men for Gunpowder, Children for Sardines: Here’s how much slaves were sold for

From the inner perimeters of these locations, stories of the treatments and the deep levels of inhumanities that were meted out to people who were captured forcefully and sold into slavery, have been told and retold for many generations.

Ghana (the Gold Coast, as it used to be known in the period) was a major point of these slavery activities and with that, people were sold for almost nothing, transported to faraway lands and used on plantations to make wealth for their captors, or their buyers (also owners).

While on a tour of the Fort William at Anomabo, in the Central Region, GhanaWeb TV’s Etsey Atisu spoke with Theresa, the caretaker of the place about the value of slaves and what they were sold for.

Startling as it may appears, she told the news team that men, women, and children (because the Fort William was the only one that had enslaved children) were sold for things such as sardines.

She also explained how between the men and women, they were priced differently for things like kitchenware, gun powder, among others.

As Theresa would describe in portions of the interview, these were ‘cruel’ ways that the White slave traders dealt with the locals.

She explained too that because at the time, there wasn’t a proper monetary system of trade as it exists now, slaves were only traded for other things like spoons.

“There was nothing like money when they started slavery. So, there was the barter trade system. The children were going for kitchen utensils, the sardines, tin of milk, the spoon, the mirrors, while the elderly ones were going for the gun and the gun powders.

“It was in the 18-thousands that money was introduced in the form of pounds and they arrived at a uniform price, that is, the women were going for 3 English pound and the men were going for 5 English pound… which could be estimated to about 3 cedis now,” she explained.

Watch more in the full video below: