The Collaborative International Dictionary
Barracoon \Bar"ra*coon`\, n. [Sp. or Pg. barraca. See
Barrack.]
A slave warehouse, or an inclosure where slaves are quartered
temporarily.
--Du Chaillu.
Wiktionary
n. The temporary cage for slaves and indentured servants in the Louisiana Territory and French colonial Africa.
Wikipedia
A barracoon (from Catalan barraca ('hut') through Spanish barracón) is a type of barracks used historically for the temporary confinement of slaves or criminals.
In the Atlantic slave trade, captured individuals were temporarily transported to and held at barracoons along the western coast of the African continent, where they awaited transportation across the Atlantic Ocean. A barracoon simplified the slave trader's job of keeping the prospective slaves alive and in captivity, with the barracks being closely guarded and the captives being fed and allowed exercise.
The barracoons varied in size and design, from small enclosures adjacent to the businesses of European traders to larger protected buildings. The amount of time a slave spent inside a barracoon depended primarily on two factors: their health and the availability of slave ships.Many captive slaves died in barracoons, some as a consequence of the hardships they experienced on their journeys and some as a result of their exposure to lethal European diseases (to which they had little immunity).
Usage examples of "barracoon".
However, in my own barracoon I have two hundred prime creatures, the best you will find in a thousand miles of sailing.
I thought of the pyre of the barracoon, empty beneath a moonless sky that now and then let drop a brief weak fall of rain.
Deir ship not come yet, and for a long time we wait in the barracoon wishing dat we could die.
We marched northward, hoping to come upon a barracoon where slavers came, but they cut us off, and we turned due eastward perforce.
If they could, they would lock us all in their barracoons and sell us to make a profit.
Takondi, and although the barracoons, the great slave-pens, had held many negroes when the inshore force arrived, they had now been marched off.
But since the breeze is dead contrary at present and likely to remain so until after sunset, I shall stand in, say farewell to the brigs and schooners, and then give those scoundrels in the town and the barracoons a salute that will put the fear of God into them.
At a guess, the hot, lazy days at the pirate camps on Grand Terre looked different from the barracoons than they did from the deck of a pirate brig.
Here, too, all was built of stone and beautified with flowersbeds of golden lilies and scarlet askinnias dividing the various rostra and barracoons one from another.
However, in my own barracoon I have two hundred prime creatures, the best you will find in a thousand miles of sailing.
Beside this savagery, the barracoons and the slave quarters are an earthly paradise.
Codrington had run down on the slave barracoons at Calabash on a clear June morning so that the five Argentinian slave ships had spotted his topsails while he was thirty miles out, and had immediately begun frantically re-landing their cargoes of slaves on the beach.
The barracoons had been sited at Calabash to take full advantage of this provision in the international agreements.
The despatches were dated four days previous to Codrington's raid upon the Calabash barracoons, making his actions not only legal but highly meritorious.
Before Sheikh Yussuf loaded his wares, he allowed them to fatten for at least a week in his barracoons, with as much to eat and drink as they could force down their throats.