One formerly enslaved woman remembered overhearing her mistress tell a prospective buyer that she “wouldn’t sell her for nothing” and “wouldn’t take two thousand for her” because she was her “little breeder.”76 In another community, a white traveler named Eli West remembered one enslaved woman who simply could not, or would not, conceive. After she continually failed to become pregnant, her mistress had her stripped naked and whipped her severely. When this brutality proved ineffectual in remedying the problem, her mistress sold the woman to slave traders.77
