1. Black People in Colonial North America
Chapter 3

2. Slavery Codes
The slavery codes regulated slaves and asserted the rights of slave owners.

3. I. The Peoples of Eastern North America
Eastern Woodlands Indians
Diverse environments
Variety of languages
Influenced by Indian cultures of Mexico
Adena culture
Ohio River Valley
Mississippian culture
Extensive trade, division of labor, urban centers
Weakened by disease, ineffective resisting British

4. The Peoples of Eastern North America (cont.)
Indians knowledgeable about East Coast survival and influenced new arrivals
Food crops
Tobacco
Transportation
Clothing
Race mixing
Sexual contact
Common between black people and Indians in early America

5. Escaping Slaves in the Carolinas
Escaping slaves in the Carolinas during the early eighteenth century sometimes found shelter with the Tuscaroras and other Indian tribes. This map, drawn during a colonial expedition against the Tuscaroras in 1713, shows a Tuscarora fort that escaped slaves probably helped design and build.

6. The Spanish Empire Colonial Empires in the Americas
- gold and silver mining
- sugar
- tobacco
- leather goods
Economy dependent on Indian labor

7. The British and Jamestown
First permanent British colony in North America founded in 1607
Trading company looking to make money for investors
Gold, trade, lumber, rice, silk
Tobacco was a profitable crop
Labor intensive
Undesirables
Indentured servants

8. Africans Arrive in the Chesapeake
First arrivals
Origins unknown
15 men
17 women
1619 Dutch ship
Unfree
English had no law for slavery
English custom forbade enslaving Christians

9. II. Black Servitude In the Chesapeake
Indentured servants
Sold labor for passage to Chesapeake
Two to seven years
High mortality ~ most died before term expired
Blacks and whites
Only skin color distinguished early laborers
Worked, lived, and slept together as unfree
Earned freedom at the end of term
Anthony Johnson PROFILE
Chattel slavery
Slaves were legal private property

10. Race and Origins of Black Slavery
17th century British tobacco colonies
Evolved from an economy based on white indentured servants to one based on black slaves
British Caribbean sugar plantations created a precedent
British gained more control over Atlantic slave trade
Reduced price of African laborers

11. Race and Origins of Black Slavery (cont.)
White indentured servants sought greater opportunities elsewhere
Race and class shaped the character of slavery
Belief that Africans were inferior to English
Prohibitions against bearing arms
Becoming Christian
Discrimination in colonial polices

12. Chattel Slavery From unfree to slave for life
Mid-17th century men, women, and children served masters for life
Slavery followed the mother
Slave codes aimed to control and exploit
owning property, making contracts, leaving without a pass
Christianity offered no protection against enslavement
Masters exempt from charges for murdering slaves while administering punishment

13. From Servitude to Slavery

14. Bacon’s Rebellion, 1676 Uprising against colonial elites
Demand for land and resources by white indentured servants
Class-based, biracial alliance
Less use of white indentured servants and more dependence on black slaves
Reduced class conflict

15. III. Plantation Slavery, 1700-1750
Tobacco Colonies
Increased demands for labor and slaves
Racial prejudice
Fewer white indentured servants available
More Africans available
Fear of class conflict

16. Plantation Slavery, 1700-1750 (cont.)
Low-Country Slavery
Early settlers were immigrants from Barbados
Brought slaves with them
Never any black indentured servants
Enslaved more Indians than other British colonies
West Africans experienced at cultivating rice
Figure 3-1

17. Africans Brought as Slaves to British North America, 1701–1775
Figure 3–1. Africans Brought as Slaves to British North America, 1701–1775.
The rise in the number of captive Africans shipped to British North America during the early eighteenth century reflects the increasing dependence of British planters on African slave labor. The declines in slave imports during the periods 1751 to 1760 and 1771 to 1775 resulted from disruptions to commerce associated with the French and Indian War (or Seven Years’ War) and the struggle between the colonies and Great Britain that preceded the American War for Independence.
SOURCE: R. C. Simmons, The American Colonies: From Settlement to Independence (New York: David McKay, 1976).

18. Plantation Slavery, 1700-1750 (cont.)
Race relations
White fears of revolt
Slave code
Carolina had strictest in North America in 1698
Watch patrols
Curfew
Task system
Permitted autonomy without white supervision
Preserved more of their African heritage

19. Sales
Sales like the one announced in this 1784 broadside were common since slavery had been established in the low country ninety years earlier. South Carolina and Georgia remained dependent on imported slaves for much longer than did the Chesapeake and the North.

20. Regions of Colonial North America, 1683–1763
Map 3–1. Regions of Colonial North America, 1683–1763.
The British colonies on the North American mainland were divided into four regions. They were bordered on the south by Spanish Florida and to the west by regions claimed by France.

21. Slave Life in Early America
Minimal housing
Dress
Men wore breechcloths
Women wore skirts
Upper bodies bare
Children naked until puberty
Heritage and culture
Slave women used dyes made from bark
Decorated cloth with ornaments
Created African-style head-wraps, hats, and hairstyles

22. View of Mulberry Street
Thomas Coram, “View of Mulberry Street, (House and Street).” About 1770, Thomas Coram painted the slave quarters and the master’s house at Mulberry Plantation, located near Charleston, South Carolina. The slave cabins with their high-pitched roofs were influenced by West African architecture.
SOURCE: Oil on paper, 10 x 17.6 cm, Gibbes Museum of Art, Carolina Art Association.

23. IV. Miscegenation and Creolization
Early Chesapeake
Africans, American Indians, and white indentured servants interacted
Cultural exchanges part of creolization
Miscegenation
Extensive in British North America in 17th and 18th centuries, though less accepted than in European sugar colonies in Caribbean, Latin America, or French Canada
British North America had many more white women
Interracial marriages banned by colonial assemblies
Kept white women from having mulatto children
Prevented a legally-recognized mixed-race class

24. V. The Origins of African-American Culture
Creolization and miscegenation
Created African Americans
Retained a generalized West African heritage
Family structure
Kinship
Religious ideas
African words
Musical instruments
Cooking and foods
Folk literature
Folk arts

25. The Origins of African-American Culture (cont.)
The Great Awakening
Began process of converting African Americans to Christianity
Evangelical churches welcomed black people
Increased black acculturation
Biracial churches
Segregation and discrimination

26. The Origins of African-American Culture (cont.)
Language, Music and Folk Literature
Black English
Gullah and Geechee
- African words and grammatical elements with English structure
Music
Important to preserving African culture
- sang while working and religious ceremonies
- banjos
Folk Literature
Entertained, instructed and united the Africans
Consisted of weak animals outsmarting the strong

27. South Carolina Plantation
This eighteenth-century painting of slaves on a South Carolina plantation provides graphic proof of the continuities between West African culture and the emerging culture of African Americans. The religious dance, the drum and banjo, and elements of the participants’ clothing are all West African in origin.
SOURCE: Abby Aldrich, Rockefeller Folk Art Museum, Williamsburg, VA.

28. African Mbanza
This photograph depicts two versions of the African mbanza. They feature leather stretched across a gourd, a wooden neck, and strings made of animal gut. In America, such instruments became known as banjos.

29. VI. Slavery in the Northern Colonies
Fewer slaves
See Figure 3-2
Cooler climate
Sufficient number of white laborers
Lack of staple crop
Diversified economy

30. Africans as a Percentage of the Total Population of the British American Colonies, 1650–1770
Figure 3–2. Africans as a Percentage of the Total Population of the British American Colonies, 1650–1770.
SOURCE: From Time on the Cross: The Economics of Negro Slavery by Robert W. Fogel and Stanley L. Engerman. Copyright © 1974 by Robert W. Fogel and Stanley L. Engerman. Reprinted by permission of W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

31. Slavery in the Northern Colonies (cont.)
Less threat of slave rebellion
Milder slave codes
New England slaves could legally own, transfer, and inherit property
Rapid assimilation
Fewer opportunities to preserve African heritage

32. Philadelphia’s London Coffee House
This eighteenth-century drawing of Philadelphia’s London Coffee House suggests the routine nature of slave auctions in early America. The main focus is on architecture. The sale of human beings is merely incidental.
SOURCE: John F. Watson, “Annals of Philadelphia,” being a collection of memoirs, anecdotes, and incidents of Philadelphia.
The London Coffee House. The Library Company of Philadelphia.

33. VII. Slavery in Spanish Florida and French Louisiana
Routes to freedom more plentiful
Spanish Florida
Blacks needed as soldiers
Became Catholic and acquired social status
People of African descent fled to Cuba when British took control in 1763
French Louisiana
Most black slaves lived in New Orleans
Became skilled artisans
Catholics
Extensive black population remained when the United States took control in 1803

34. African Americans in New Spain Northern Borderlands
More Freedoms
- Fewer Africans than in British colonies
- gained employment instead of being slaves
Racial Purity determined social status
- pure blood Spaniards at the top
- Africans and Indians at the bottom
Africans and Indians could buy a higher social status

35. Mural
This detail of a mural located in the Arizona capitol building shows, on its extreme right, the former slave Esteban, who wears a blue turban. During the early 1500s, shipwrecked Esteban traveled through Texas to Mexico. Later he joined Spanish expeditions that explored what are now New Mexico and Arizona.

36. IX. Black Women in Colonial America
Varied according to region
New England
Boundary between slavery and freedom permeable
Lucy Terry Prince
South
Few opportunities
17th and 18th centuries ninety percent work in fields
In time more women become house servants
Constant white supervision
Sexual exploitation
More complications giving birth

37. Black Women in Colonial America

38. X. Black Resistance and Rebellion
“Goldbricking” to sabotage to escape and rebellion
Early resistance and rebellion aimed to force masters to give concessions and not end system
New arrivals
Most open to defiance
Maroons
Escaped slaves
Established communities
Spanish Florida
Great Dismal Swamp

39. X. Black Resistance and Rebellion (cont.)
Subtle day-to-day obstructionism
Malingered, broke tools, mistreated animals, destroyed crops, stole, and poisoned masters
Rebellions
Smaller and fewer than in Brazil or Jamaica
Several in 18th century British North America
New York City, 1712
Charleston, South Carolina, 1739
Intensified fear of revolt in Deep South

40. African-American — American Events

41. African-American — American Events

42. African-American — American Events

43. African-American — American Events

44. XI. Conclusion Resistance to oppression
Much lost but much West African heritage preserved
Fundamental issues
Contingency and determinism in human events