ed to be like Europeans because he thought they were superior. He always tried to better himself and to every opportunity to gain instruction . He was lucky in that he was sold to a Quaker that was the only person known for treating slaves well in the West Indies. Slaves would be rented out by their owners. Slaves were supposed to get an allowance from whoever they were rented to, but often times they would not be given their allowance and would be beaten if they asked for it. Once a slave brought back a master's money a little late because he had to wait on the person to pay him and he was staked to the ground and received fifty lashes. Equiano gives many convincing circumstances in which he tells about the horrors of the slave trade. His account of one of the ships he traveled upon reads like this: "I was often witnessed to cruelties of every kind, which were exercised on my unhappy fellow slaves. I used frequently to have different cargo's of new negroes in my care for sale; and it was almost a constant practice with our clerks and other whites, to commit violent depredations of the chastity of the female slaves; and these I was, though with reluctance, obliged to submit to it at all times, being unable to help them." p.93 One slave was staked to the ground and his ears cut off bit by bit because he had sex with a white prostitute. There was a negro slave whose leg was cut off for running away. Some of the torture items used were an iron muzzle, thumb screws, hot wax being dripped on their bodies, and getting beaten until bones were broken. Slavery is an institution that makes all slaves lives intolerable. "Is not this one common and crying sin enough to bring down God's judgement on the islands? He tells us the oppressor and the oppressed are both in his hands; and if these are not the poor, the broken hearted, the blind, the captive, the bruised, which our savior speaks of, who are they?" p.97 In the West Indies, the l...
