The term ‘captivity narratives' has mostly been associated with the whites who were abducted by the indigenous tribes of America and who told and re-told their experiences after their release by ransom or escape. However, they were never perceived as slaves despite their accounts of being maltreated and over-worked under inhumane circumstances. They were merely captives. On the other hand, the story of the white prisoners who were abducted by Barbary ‘walking men' in North Africa were categorized in almost all historical and literary chronicles as ‘slaves'. Over a period of almost three centuries, from the 17th till the 19th centuries, historian John Blasingame estimates that between half a million to one million white slaves were held in North Africa. The earliest literary account is that of the narrative of Abraham Browne, under the title A Book of Remembrance of Gods Provydences towards me in 1655.
This paper attempts to trace and research through the reading of three American texts the complicated master-slave relationship and the related issues of cultural exchange, the eternal cross-crescent conflict, the stereotypical demonization of the other as well as the racial and religious prejudices and biases in tandem with New World politics. The proposed texts are Captain James Riley's An Authentic Narrative of the Loss of the Brig Commerce, wrecked on the coast of North Africa (1817) and its Sequel to Riley's Narrative published a decade later from the personal possessions of Riley's son. The third text is Dean King's non-fiction book Skeletons on the Zahara: A True Story of Survival which is based mainly on the two autobiographical narratives where King embarks on a sponsored expedition to retrace Riley's journey across the Saharan desert