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plants, and harvesting the leaves. Yet the population of the colony was very small—just a few hundred people in 1612. More workers were needed. LABOR SHORTAGE IN VIRGINIA At first the English colonists tried asking local Native Americans to work with them in the fields. However, the natives did not make good farm workers. Native American men were not very interested in farming or in being tied down to one place. At any time they would simply leave the farm and rejoin their tribe. Another source of labor was needed. In 1618, the managers of the Virginia Company began offering fifty acres of land to any worker who left England and moved to the colony. The free land could be used for a tobacco farm, which would increase the colony’s tobacco exports and provide greater profits for the Virginia Company’s investors. But the cost of passage to Virgina was too expensive for most working-class Britons. So under the “headright system,” the Virginia Company would give fifty acres of land to any person who would pay the passage for a poor person who was willing to work in Virginia. In exchange, the worker agreed to serve an agreed-upon period of time (usually five to seven years) to repay the cost of their trip. The work contract was called an indenture, so these workers were known as indentured servants . The headright system allowed wealthy farmers to invest in more workers and expand their farms. Even if the indentured servant died on the way to Virginia, the farmer who had sponsored him or her still received the land. Large tobacco plantations began to spread outside Jamestown, and Virginia was soon on its way to becoming a self-sustaining colony. AN UNEXPECTED ARRIVAL The first documented arrival of Africans to the United States occurred in 1619. That year, John Rolfe wrote, “About the latter

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Origins of Slavery in America