Massachusetts Colonists Enter the Slave Trade; First Enslaved Africans Arrive (1638)

In 1638, the Boston ship Desire returned from Providence Island in the Caribbean carrying enslaved Africans and Indigenous people — the first documented slave trade voyage by New England colonists. This made Massachusetts the first English colony in North America to directly participate in the Atlantic slave trade. The colony's merchants would become central to the triangular trade over the following century, exchanging New England goods for enslaved Africans on the West African coast.