The White Lion

The White Lion was a privateer ship of English manufacture that brought the first Africans to Virginia in late August 1619, a year before the Mayflower.[1] Though the Africans were initially sold as indentured servants, it is regarded as the origin of enslaved Africans in English colonies in mainland North America.[2] There had been slavery among Native Americans in the United States since before Europeans arrived, which continued with capture and purchase of Native Americans for work in mainland colonies and export to the Caribbean.[3][4] African slaves had earlier arrived on the current Georgia or Carolina coast in 1526 with Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón[5][6][7] though they escaped,[5][8] and in Florida in 1539 with Hernando de Soto, and in the 1565 founding of St. Augustine, Florida.[7][8]

The slaves on the White Lion were probably among the thousands who had been captured in 1618-1619 by a force largely of Africans, under nominal Portuguese leadership, making war[9][10] on Ndongo in modern Angola. These particular slaves were taken on the Portuguese slave ship São João Bautista from Luanda, Angola, capital of the then-Portuguese colony.[10] The White Lion, along with the Treasurer, commanded by Daniel Elfrith, intercepted the São João Bautista on its way to modern-day Veracruz on the Gulf coast of Mexico.[1] The two ships captured and divided part of the Portuguese ship's human cargo, under the aegis of Dutch letters of marque from Maurice, Prince of Orange.[1] White Lion captain John Colyn Jope then sailed for Virginia to sell the slave cargo, first landing in Point Comfort, in modern-day Hampton Roads.[1]

As John Rolfe, secretary of the colony of Virginia, wrote to Virginia Company of London treasurer Edwin Sandys:

About the latter end of August, a Dutch man of Warr of the burden of a 160 tunnes arrived at Point-Comfort, the Comandors name Capt Jope, his Pilott for the West Indies one Mr Marmaduke an Englishman. They mett with the Treasurer in the West Indyes, and determined to hold consort shipp hetherward, but in their passage lost one the other. He brought not any thing but 20. and odd Negroes, which the Governor and Cape Marchant bought for victualls (whereof he was in greate need as he pretended) at the best and easyest rates they could.[11]

After being sold off the White Lion, two of the slaves, Isabella and Anthony, married and had a child in 1624. William Tucker, as they named him after a local planter, was the first recorded Black child born in English America.[12]

See also
  • Clotilda, the last known ship to bring slaves to America.

References
  1. McCartney, Martha (8 October 2019). "Virginia's First Africans". Encyclopedia Virginia. Retrieved 24 February 2020.
  2. Fanto Deetz, Dr. Kelley (13 August 2019). "400 years ago, enslaved Africans first arrived in Virginia". National Geographic. Retrieved 24 February 2020.
  3. Lauber, Almon Wheeler (1913). "Enslavement by the Indians Themselves, Chapter 1 in Indian Slavery in Colonial Times Within the Present Limits of the United States". Studies in History, Economics, and Public Law. Columbia University. 53 (3): 25–48.
  4. Gallay, Alan (2009). "Introduction: Indian Slavery in Historical Context". In Gallay, Alan (ed.). Indian Slavery in Colonial America. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press. pp. 1–32. Retrieved March 8, 2017.
  5. Cameron, Guy, and Stephen Vermette; Vermette, Stephen (2012). "The Role of Extreme Cold in the Failure of the San Miguel de Gualdape Colony". The Georgia Historical Quarterly. 96 (3): 291–307. ISSN 0016-8297. JSTOR 23622193.
  6. Parker, Susan (2019-08-24). "'1619 Project' ignores fact that slaves were present in Florida decades before". St. Augustine Record. Retrieved 2019-12-06.
  7. Francis, J. Michael, Gary Mormino and Rachel Sanderson (2019-08-29). "Slavery took hold in Florida under the Spanish in the 'forgotten century' of 1492-1619". Tampa Bay Times. Retrieved 2019-12-06.
  8. Torres-Spelliscy, Ciara; Law, a fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of; Br, the author of "Political; s." (2019-08-23). "Perspective - Everyone is talking about 1619. But that's not actually when slavery in America started". Washington Post. Retrieved 2019-12-06.
  9. Painter, Nell Irvin. (2006). Creating Black Americans: African-American history and its meanings, 1619 to the present. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 23–24. ISBN 0-19-513755-8. OCLC 57722517.
  10. Thornton, John (July 1998). "The African Experience of the "20. and Odd Negroes" Arriving in Virginia in 1619". The William and Mary Quarterly. 3rd. 55 (3): 421–434. doi:10.2307/2674531. JSTOR 2674531.
  11. Kingsbury, Susan Myra, ed. (1933). The Records of the Virginia Company of London, Volume 3. Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office. p. 243.
  12. Bennett, Jr., Lerone (1962). Before the Mayflower: A History of the Negro in America, 1619-1962 (2017 ed.). BN Publishing. p. 30. ISBN 978-1-68411-534-1.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.