An important piece of the ivory story concerns the ways that those involved in its trade obtained and transported this valuable material. The exploitation of the African Bush elephant, Loxodonta Africana, is an obvious part of the story. Less well known is that slave labor moved the tusks the long distances from the African interior to the coast on the Indian Ocean. Established slave trade routes already existed through central East Africa, so when the demand for ivory burgeoned in the 1840s, the ivory trade took advantage of these ready-made routes and thousands of tribal people found themselves forced into slavery to carry the tusks.
Depending on where hunters and buyers obtained the tusks, they might need to be carried for hundreds of miles to a port. Missionaries from Europe, in Africa to spread Christianity, left vivid accounts of the suffering of ivory’s human porters. Though precise figures are not available, David Livingstone, the famous Scottish physician and clergyman who spent decades in Africa, violently opposed the use of enslaved workers and is said to have estimated that five Africans died for every tusk moved to the coast for export. The American Civil War created some pressure to end slavery in Africa, but it continued there through 1897.
Donald L. Malcarne was a historian of the lower Connecticut River Valley and a past president of the Essex Historical Society. Brenda Milkofsky curated the exhibition, From Combs to Keyboards: The Ivory Cutting Industry in the Connecticut Valley, while Director-Curator of the Connecticut River Museum in Essex, CT.
- See more at: http://connecticuthistory.org/ivory-cutting-the-rise-and-decline-of-a-connecticut-industry/#sthash.X7GoZFBG.dpuf