COLONIAL LIFE

     In 1607, the first English settlement in America was established in Jamestown, Virginia. The settlers were desperate for labor needed to push inland to clear forests and cultivate the land.

     A short-lived attempt to use Indians as laborers proved unsuccessful; the Indians were not able to adopt to large-scale farming operations and many died in the fields.

     The search for labor then focused upon White Englishmen who were brought to the colonies as indentured servants. Most of them were poor. Others were convicted felons who signed contracts as servants to escape imprisonment. In return for passage to America they agreed to serve as bondsmen for seven years.

     As the colonies grew and prospered it became increasingly clear that the supply of bondsmen would be inadequate.

     Then in 1619, a Dutch war ship sailed into Jamestown harbor. The captain needed food for his crew. To pay for the food, he offered the colonists 20 
Africans. The colonists quickly accepted because there was much work to be done.

    It should be noted, and emphasized here, that those 20 human beings came ashore as bondsmen. They were consigned as indentured servants with the same contracts for servitude to work as the White Englishmen. That is, that after a period of seven years they would be released.

     Bondsmen, by law, had certain rights. They were not chattels in the same sense as those who were slaves. They could be (and often were) traded and sold to new holders.  In the case of those who were sold to new holders who attempted, by various devices, to lengthen their period of bound service, they could sue for illegal detention. A slave, under then existing English laws, had no legal status; he could not sue, be sued, or give testimony.
     
     This fact is supported by Virginia court records which documents that in 1624, John Phillips, one of the 20 Africans, was a witness in  a lawsuit. This firmly establishes that Black people came to the shores of America, and lived during  early colonial times as indentured servants, and not as slaves.

     Anthony Johnson, for example, came to Virginia as an indentured servant. In time he became free and even brought White indentured servants from England to work  for him.