"African Americans in the Colonial Era".

             An African American is an American of African descent. In the book "African Americans in the Colonial Era", told is how this descends came about. When Africans were brought from Africa to the new world to become slaves, many changes occurred in their culture. Among these changes in culture, has emerged a new race. The African American. .

             When slavery began in English North America, nearly all the slaves came from the coast and interior of West and West Central Africa. "A few came from the Mozambique coast or Madagascar, around the Cape of Good Hope". In coming to the Americas, these Africans kept religion as the heart of their culture. "African slaves came to the New World with strong religious beliefs and thoughts of the afterlife. But religious belief is personal and often developed individually, and the private world of the religion was a sanctuary which slaves could turn during periods of anxiety and stress that were such a large part of their lives. African religions, of course, were not all alike, but West and West-Central Africans held some patterns of beliefs in common." Slaves arrived here hoping to continue their own religious beliefs but forced upon them, although not by all landowners, was the Christian religion. "In the New World, blacks received Christian teaching in more or less strenuous doses at times and in various locales." With this noted, it is hard to conceive the idea that they would have even done this to these slaves. .

             In the vast majority of blacks from Africa relied on one of two basic modes of subsistence: pastoralism or agriculture. The herdsman would keep their cattle, sheep or goats, on the northern and southern extremes of the Atlantic"s slave gathering area. Farmers around the savannas north or south of the equatorial forests grew rice, millet, sorghum, or maize.