4-2.6

It Is Essential For Students To Know:

• Indentured Survants had a significant impact on the colonies. Settlers needed workers to help in planting and harvesting cash crops such as tobacco. Poor people in England who had been displaced from their land needed work.
• The indentured servants signed contracts in which they agreed that the servant would work for the land owners for a certain number of years in exchange for food, clothing and, most importantly, passage to the New World.
• The land owners were also able to secure more land because they paid the passage of the indentured servant [headright system]. Often, the landowner did not live up to the contract and abused and mistreated the indentured servant.
• The servant hoped that once their time of indenture was over they would have an opportunity to own their own land. Once they were free, many moved to the backcountry of the colonies in order to claim their own land.
• When the number of potential indentured servants no longer was enough to fill the need for workers, the colonists turned to slave labor from Africa.
• The enslavement of Africans had a profound impact on the economy and culture of the colonies and continues to have an impact on the culture of the United States today.
• Africans brought with them their own culture, skills and languages. Africans were very knowledgeable about raising livestock and the farming techniques needed to plant crops such as rice. Without African skills and labor the economy of the southern United States would not have developed these cash crops. Africans also impacted the cooking styles of the South, and consequently later the United States, because they often prepared the meals not only for themselves but also for the slave owners. They added greens and other vegetables to plantation owners’ meat and starch diets, thus improving health. Since Africans came from many different tribal groups and spoke no English when they arrived in the colonies. Some developed distinctive dialects such as Gullah.
• Gullah (Gee-chee) was a spoken language of Africans that developed in the Sea Islands off the coasts of South Carolina and Georgia. A mixture of many spoken languages combined with newly created words, Gullah was unique to the coastal region because of this area’s limited access (They lived on an island that could only be reached by boat.) and the large concentration of Africans from numerous regions. Other customs such as the making of sea grass baskets and music were important to the slaves’ extension of their previous culture from Africa into the New World.
  
• As living conditions began to worsen on the plantations and slaves wanted to pass along information about upcoming meetings pertaining to running away or work slow-downs, they would put this information into a song.
  

It Is Not Essential For Students To Know:

• Students do not need to focus on specific plantations or their owners.
• Students do not need to know how sea grass baskets are made or rice is grown.
• Although exposure to African American songs and folk tales will help the students to better understandappreciate the rich herritage the African Americans brought to the colonies.
• Students do not need to know specific songs or languages of the African Americans.