Who brought African slaves to North America first?

There is an enormous amount that has been said and is yet to be said on the origins of African slavery in the New World. I’ll leave many aspects of this question to other experts. In particular, I won’t say much on slavery in Spanish-controlled territories of the Caribbean, some of the ideological and religious justifications of slavery, such as dum diversas, or the earliest interactions of Europeans and Africans on the African continent itself. These are avenues of inquiry you should explore, but that I’m not comfortable answering in depth…yet. Exhibiting the type of pedantry that I hate oh-so-much, I’m going to ask, “What do you mean by North America?”, and answer with, “English North America, and some other stuff.” If any of my omissions invite individuals with an expertise in early African slavery you’ll be even better served.

My teacher said 1619.

So:

About the latter end of August, a Dutch man of Warr of the burden of a 160 tunnes arriued at Point-Comfort, the Commandors name Capt Jope, his Pilott for the West Indies one M[r.] Marmaduke an Englishman. They mett w[ith] the Trier in the West Indyes, and determined to hold consort shipp hitherward, but in their passage lost one the other. He brought not any thing but 20. and odd Negroes, w[hich] the Governo[r] and Cape Marchant bought for victualle (whereof he was in greate need as he pretended) at the best and easyest rate they could. He hadd a lardge and ample Commyssion from his Excellency to range and to take purchase in the West Indyes.

The above excerpt was written by John Rolfe to [Edwin Sandys]( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edwin_Sandys_(died_1629) about the arrival of a ship to the Virginia colony in 1619. What’s significant about this letter? Well, for starters it was one of only three documents that accounted for the arrival of Africans in Virginia until the late 1990’s.

The others were:

2.) A similar letter by John Pory to Dudley Carleton, an English envoy to the Dutch:

The occasion of this ship’s coming hither was an accidental consortship in the West Indies with the Tresurer, an English man of warre also, licensed by[…]the Duke of Savoye to take Spaniards as lawfull prize. This ship, the Treasurer, wente out of England in Aprill was twelvemoneth, about a moneth, I thinke, before any peace was concluded between the king of Spaine and that prince. Hither shee came to Captaine Argall, then governour of this Colony, being parte-owner of her. Hee more for love of gaine, the root of all evill, then for any true love he bore to this Plantation, victualled and manned her anewe, and sent her with the same Commission to raunge the Indies.

3.) John Smith’s Generall Historie of Virginia, published in 1624, which describes the same Dutch man-of-war Rolfe spoke of. The “twenty Negars” on board were exchanged for some “victualles” (provisions).

These letters are originating at Jamestown, founded in 1607. What they tell us is that in 1619 Africans were delivered to the Virginia colony from the West Indies. They are the earliest solid account of Africans in the earliest English colony. They say that the first Africans arrived from the Caribbean.

However, in 1997, Engel Sluiter published his findings of a Spanish account book which casts serious doubt on the origin of these “20. And odd Negroes,” but not the year. We are left with 1619, but now told these individuals came directly from Africa. Sluiter’s findings suggest that the Africans that arrived in Virginia were loaded onto one of six slave ships (the San Juan Bautista), in Angola. The San Juan Bautista was subsequently assaulted by English corsairs. In “consortship”, the Dutch ship that arrived at Point Comfort and the English ships divvied up their loot: enslaved human beings. Rather than Rolfe’s assertion that these slaves had come from the Caribbean, it is likely they originated from a Portuguese slave port in Angola, specifically Sao Paulo de Loanda, and were headed toward Mexico.

The English attack on the San Juan Bautista makes it quite clear that slaves were being moved from Africa to the Americas regularly. English privateers were constantly targeting Spanish ships or settlements in the early 17th century. Three hundred and fifty slaves boarded the San Juan Bautista in Sao Paulo, but only “20 odd” disembarked at Jamestown. The account book Sluiter cited tells us that the English left the attacked ship with 147 slaves, 24 of whom were sold in Jamaica. This transfer of slaves from ship-to-ship and the dull, clerical, cold-blooded manner in which the arrival of Africans to Virginia is conveyed suggests that this type of human-as-commodity conduct was commonplace. Or as Michael Guasco puts it: the events of 1619 were a bit more yawn-inducing than we typically allow. Were the “20 odd,” then, a novel introduction to transatlantic passenger lists/bills of lading? Were they an incredible and bewildering introduction into European daily living?

No.

As Ira Berlin writes, “Black life on mainland North America originated not in Africa or in America but in the netherworld between the two continents.” The clashing, churning, transformative, nature of European and African contact had helped to create the “Atlantic creole.” Creole communities were established in the New World right alongside European communities in the earliest stages of European discovery. Berlin describes the combined European, African, American perspective as the Atlantic littoral. This combined perspective helped black newcomers to the New World to shape the landscape around them. The first arrivals to the Americas were both voluntary and involuntary. Alongside Columbus, Cortes, De Soto, and Pizarro, were creole explorers, but by-and-large, even the earliest black men and women to set foot on the American continents were slaves.

And what of: 1619? Is that a good answer?

Maybe not. In 1526 (double check my math: 93 years before 1619), African slaves rebelled against Lucas Vazquez de Ayllon during an expedition in present-day South Carolina.

Maybe 1619 is a good date for English North America, then?

Maybe not. There is some evidence that Sir Francis Drake left African slaves behind in North America during his rescue of the men of Roanoke in 1586.

So, what’s the big deal with 20 or so Africans in 1619?

Let’s let the venerable [Edmund S. Morgan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_Morgan_(historian) answer that:

The founders of Virginia, having discovered in tobacco a substitute for the sugar of the West Indies and the silver of Peru, still felt the lack of a native labor force with which to exploit the new crop. […] But there was a way out. The Spanish and Portuguese had already demonstrated what could be done in the New World when a local labor force became inadequate: they brought in natives of Africa.

Sources/Further Reading:

Landers, Jane. Slaves, subjects, and subversives: Blacks in colonial Latin America. UNM Press, 2006.

Hume, Ivor Noel. The Virginia Adventure: Roanoke to James Towne: An Archaeological and Historical Odyssey. Charlottesville: UP of Virginia, 1997.

Berlin, Ira. Many thousands gone: the first two centuries of slavery in North America. Cambridge, Mass. : Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1998.

Sluiter, Engel. "New Light on the "20. and Odd Negroes" Arriving in Virginia, August 1619." The William and Mary Quarterly 54, no. 2 (1997): 395-98

Edmund, S. "Morgan, The Labor Problem at Jamestown, 1607-18, 76 AM." The American Historical Review (1971): 595-611.