ABSTRACT
In 1607 the Virginia Company’s colonizing party arrived at Chesapeake Bay, in the northeastern region of Virginia. The party was at first attacked by local Indians, perhaps because of their earlier unpleasant experiences with Europeans. Slavery could be imposed as a punishment for crime, and laws authorizing the private ownership of slaves would eventually be enacted in Virginia, but no such law was enacted until the 1660s. Africans in Virginia were being adversely affected by colonial legislation that deprived them of many rights and that, beginning in the 1660s, institutionalized a racialized system of slavery. To escape further harassment by the colonists, some Native Americans sold their land and left the region to join indigenous nations further inland that remained independent. New treaties between the colony and its indigenous neighbors preserved some land for local Indian communities, but Native Americans who remained in the Chesapeake became menial workers.
