What designation was given to the 20 africans sold in 1619?

Question

What designation was given to the 20 africans sold in 1619?

Answer 1

Although many consider these Africans to have been the first slaves to be sold in the English colony, they may actually have been treated as indentured servants. There doesn't appear to be hard evidence for either case.

In any event, they would not likely have been the first people held as slaves in North America. It was very common for prisoners, whether natives or colonists of another Old World power, to be enslaved by the natives, and the English, and later by the French. Indentured servitude was also common in New France, many of the colonists (and my ancestors) having come to the colony on three- or four-year work contracts. (Any many of them may have stayed here only because, by the time their contracts ended, they had been disenfranchised by the French king and were unable to leave the colony.)