The role and contributions of indigenous tribes, indentured labour and

slaves in the colonial America

The primary goal of British expansion and colonization in North America was to
acquire land and resources to produce exports to sell for profit on the growing
trans-Atlantic market. Profitable production demanded significant labour
resources. Access to land was an important factor in seventeenth century colonial
America. Land, English settlers believed, was the basis of liberty and economic
freedom. Owning land gave men control over their own labour and, in most
colonies, the right to vote. The promise of immediate access to land lured free
settlers, and freedom dues that included land persuaded potential immigrants to
sign contracts as indentured servants. However without labour land would have
little value. Since European emigrants did not come to America intending to work
the land of others (except the indentured servants). As the Europeans started
settling in north America a demand for labour arose for building roads, homes,
railway tracks; cultivate crops etc. the colonists tried to quell this demand for
labour by adopting three broad forms of labour, chiefly- native Americans,
indentured white servants and African slaves. The role of these groups in the
growth of the colonial economy has been significant.

Indigenous Tribes

Land in North America, of course, was already occupied. And the arrival of English
settlers presented the native inhabitants of eastern North America with the
greatest crisis in their history. The English colonists were chiefly interested in
displacing the Indians and settling on their land and organizing their labour. Many
eastern Native Americans initially welcomed the newcomers, or at least their
goods, which they appreciated for their practical advantages. Items like woven
cloth, metal kettles, iron axes, fishhooks, and guns were quickly integrated into
Native life. European metal goods changed their farming, hunting, and cooking
practices.

The colonists tried to enslave indigenous tribes, many of them were taken as slaves
after the tribes lost battles with the Europeans. Colonists of New England and
Carolinas captured Native Americans in wars and distributed them as slaves.
However the colonists quickly discovered that the Indians, the Native Americans
would not make an efficient labour force required for their plantations. The
alternatives for labour power were to be found. For a variety of reasons, Africans
replaced American Indians as the main population of enslaved people in the
Americas. In some cases, warfare and disease eliminated the indigenous
populations completely. Moreover, indentured labourers from Europe and African
slaves were skilled and better equipped than the indigenous tribes for the various
labour requirements that arose in the colonies.

INDENTURED LABOUR

The idea of indentured servitude was born of a need for cheap labour. The earliest
settlers soon realized that they had lots of land to care for, but no one to care for it.
Indentured servants became vital to the colonial economy. By a system called
Headright, settlers were encouraged to acquire land (50 acres per person) by
importing people from England who would sign contract for three to seven of
servitude (unpaid labour) in exchange for their passage to America. Basically,
Indentured servants were those who voluntarily surrendered their freedom for a
specified time (usually five to seven years) in exchange for passage to America and
freedom dues. Just like slaves, these servants could also be bought and sold, they
could not marry without the permission of their owner, were subject to physical
punishment, and their obligation to labour was enforced by the courts. While the life
of an indentured servant was harsh and restrictive, it wasn't slavery. Unlike slaves,
these servants could look forward to a release from bondage once they had
completed the term specified in their contracts. There were laws that protected
some of their rights. An indentured servant's contract could be extended as
punishment for breaking a law, such as running away, or in the case of female
servants, becoming pregnant.

Once the indentured servants had completed their term as labourers they would
receive a payment known as “freedom dues” and become free members of society
but the freedom dues were sometimes so meagre that they did not enable
recipients to acquire land and other resources. Many of these servants often found
the reality of life in the New World less appealing than they had anticipated. Many
employers, who employed indentured servants, constantly complained of servants
running away, not working diligently or being unruly.

Convinced that England was overpopulated, the British government encouraged

emigration to America of the unemployed class. Gradually, with England's rise to
commercial and industrial primacy by the end of the seventeenth century, the
official attitude changed, culminating in the enactment by Parliament in 1765 of a
law forbidding the emigration of skilled workers but the poor, the untrained, and the
criminal class were encouraged to immigrate to the colonies.

Attracted by higher wages and the opportunity to set tip an independent business or
to acquire a homestead, skilled workers continued streaming into the colonies,
down to the moment of war with Britain.

The transportation of convicts from Britain provided another source of bound labour
in the colonies. This practice, stepped up in the latter half of the seventeenth
century, was spelled out by a Parliamentary act in 1718 authorizing seven-year
terms of servitude for those convicted of lesser crimes and fourteen years for
those guilty of offenses punishable by death. With continuous expansion of colonies,
the demands for labour grew, so did the cost of indentured servants. Many
landowners also felt threatened by newly freed servants demand for land. The
colonial elite realized the problems of indentured servitude. Landowners turned to
African slaves as a more profitable and ever-renewable source of labour and the
shift from indentured servants to racial slavery had begun.
SLAVERY

In 1619 the first black Africans came to Virginia. With no slave laws in place, they
were initially treated as indentured servants. That is they were treated as bound
servants and were freed when their terms expired and given pretty much the same
opportunities for freedom dues as the white indentured servants. Sometime in the
1640s, the practice began of selling imported blacks as servants for life. Slave laws
were soon passed – in Massachusetts in 1641 and Virginia in 1661 – and any small
freedoms that might have existed for blacks before, were taken away. Soon
restrictions on slave mobility, along with a harsh system of discipline, were written
into the "Black Codes" of all the Southern colonies.

The large scale plantation of crops other than tobacco like rice, sugar, and cotton
developing in America’s southern colonies and high mortality rate of labourers led
the colonialists to meet labour needs by employing African slaves. White planters in
the region starting importing African slaves when rice cultivation was introduced
into the South, as the first English planters in South Carolina knew little about rice
cultivation. Not only were Africans well suited to tropical climates, they also
brought special skills and husbandry knowledge for crops such as rice. Their
innovations increased the efficiency and profitability of cultivation. All this evidently
shows how important the role of slaves was to the colonial economy of North
America, as they were not just a form of cheap exploitative labour.

During the latter part of the 17th century, the economic development of the
Chesapeake region (Virginia and Maryland) revolved around tobacco cultivation
required intensive labour. At first, Chesapeake farmers hired indentured servants
to harvest tobacco crops. The scarcity of indentured servants meant that the price
of their labour contracts increased, and Chesapeake farmers began to look for
alternative, cheaper sources of bonded labour. Also, indentured labours after
becoming free came into conflict with the planters and sometimes even revolt.
Thus, after 1700, planters turned toward imported African slaves to fulfil their
desire for cheap labour. Although African chattel slavery was a more expensive
investment that white indentured servitude, it guaranteed a lifetime service of free
labour. As the demand for Chesapeake cash crops continued to grow, planters
began to increasingly invest in the Atlantic slave trade.

Even though slavery was not a prevalent institution in the North, most northerners
had a vested stake in ensuring that American slavery flourished in the South. This is
particularly true after the advent of the cotton gin, which supplied the North with
the surplus of raw cotton necessary to produce finished goods for export. Northern
industry and commerce relied on southern cash crop production; therefore, most
northerners were content to allow slavery to flourish in the southern states.
Indeed, it wasn’t until later arguments over the admission and representation of
states in the union and the threat of southern states overpowering their northern
counterparts because of their higher slave populations that many northerners
began to oppose the expansion of southern slavery.
Slavery and the African slave trade quickly became a building block of the colonial
economy and an integral part of expanding and developing the British commercial
empire in the Atlantic world. In 1660, Charles II created the Royal African Company
to trade in slaves and African goods. Between 1672 and 1713, the company bought
125,000 captives on the African coast. Slaves everywhere resisted their exploitation
and attempted to gain freedom through armed uprisings and rebellions, such as the
Stono Rebellion and the New York Slave Insurrection of 1741. Other less violent
means of resistance included sabotage, running away, and slow labour paces on
the plantations.

Slavery was outlawed in the USA after the American Civil War but the
repercussions of this cruel form of labour are still felt by the descendants of the
African slaves in form of racism and evident economic divide between the black and
white populations of North America.