9781422274231

end of August, a Dutch man of Warr of the burden of a 160 tunes arrived at Point-Comfort, the Comandors name Capt Jope, his Pilott for the West Indies one Mr Marmaduke an Englishman. … He brought not any thing but 20. and odd Negroes, w[hich] the Governo[r] and Cape Merchant bought for victuall[s].” The twenty African captives were supposed to have gone to the colony of New Spain (Mexico). However, they were diverted to Virginia, where they were sold to the colonists. Today, no one is certain whether these captives were sold as indentured servants, who would eventually be able to gain their freedom, or as slaves who would remain stuck in servitude for their entire life. Slave ships from Africa would continue to stop in Virginia throughout the 1620s. Virginia’s first population census, in March 1620, found thirty-two Africans living in the colony, along with 892 Europeans. Fifteen of the Africans were male and seventeen were female; all were identified as “servants.” By 1630, there were over a hundred Africans living in the colony. Some of these Africans were able to gain their freedom and become respected members of the colony. Whether this by working through the end of an indenture period, or if they were required to purchase their freedom from slavery, is unknown for certain. A notable success was Anthony Johnson, who was brought from Africa to Virginia in 1621 and was sold to a Virginia farmer named Bennett. By 1635 Johnson was a free man, and by 1651 he and his wife Mary (also a former African slave) owned 250 acres of farmland along the Pungoteague Creek on the eastern shore of Virginia. They received the land by purchasing the indentures of five workers—four of these indentured servants were white Europeans, and one was of African descent. Johnson later moved to Maryland, where he had a large farm and owned slaves. FROM INDENTURED SERVITUDE TO SLAVERY During the early 1600s, racial characteristics such as skin color were not the primary way that people were categorized. People

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THE SLAVE TRADE IN COLONIAL AMERICA