Slavery: Beyond Black and White

Records show that the first group of laborers was Africans who arrived in Virginia on a Dutch Ship in 1619. It was known that the Jamestown colonists treated the Africans as indentured servants. As years passed, many of these Africans received land and their freedom. Unfortunately, other Africans arrived in small groups, but it would be many years later when the Europeans would begin the systematic use of Africans as slave labor. Economics was a major issue. In Virginia, many indentured servants were purchased for 1,000 pounds of tobacco, while a slave might cost double or triple that amount. By the late 1600s, a decline in the indentured servant population doubled with an increase in the colonies overall wealth. Most arrivals to North America came abroad slave ships, not as indentured servants, but to be sold as slaves.
According to the Equiano packet, it stated that the European slave trade began on a small scale. A Portuguese sea captain landed on the Slave Coast, and ...