Missionaries were sent to the trading stations on the African coast where the captives were baptized and catechized.

The Church feared that the purity of the faith might be undermined by the infusion of pagan influences.

Then, when a slave ship reached the New World, a friar boarded the ship and examined the slaves to see that the requirements had been met.

The Church also insisted that the slaves become regular communicants, and it liked to view itself as the champion of their human rights.
The degree to which the individual rights of the slave were either protected or totally suppressed provides a clearer insight to the differences between North American and South American slavery.

The laws outlining the rights of slaves have been traditionally placed into four categories: term of servitude, marriage and the family, police and disciplinary powers, and, finally, property and other civil rights.
In both systems the term of servitude was for life, and the child's status was inherited from its mother.