The Life of the Indentured Servant
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Background Information for The Life of the Indentured Servant

Objectives

a. Students will identify the characteristics of those who became indentured servants.

b. Students will provide reasons as to why indentured servants came to the United States.

c. Students will provide a description of the daily life of an indentured servant.

d. Students will identify the laws regulating the lives of indentured servants in the Jamestown Colony.

Materials

http://www.lib.virginia.edu/cataloging/vnp/gazette/serv1.htm
http://www.whc.neu.edu/prototype/06/br2n1.html
http://www.msstate.edu/listarchives/afrigeneas/199710/msg00025.html
http://www.stratfordhall.org/ed-servants.htm
http://www.igc.apc.org/esp/chapvi.htm#B
Galenson, D.W. (1981). White Servitude in Colonial America. New York: The Cambridge Press, pp.171-180
Smith, A.E. (1947). Colonists in Bondage.Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press, pp. 1-20.

pen, paper, overhead, transparency

Relevance

It is important to learn about the life of indentured servants in order to understand how slavery began. Did you know that slavery did not include the concept of race until the late 1600s? Many historians consider indentured servants as the earliest form of American slaves.

Involvement of the Learners

After getting started, tell the students about the typical contract. "All right class, we have already discussed the living conditions in England during the colonization of the Americas. Imagine you are a poor British person during the early 1600s. You are a skilled artisan, but unemployment is so high, you are barely able to provide for your family. A man in the community offers you and your family free passage to America, the Land of Opportunity. In exchange for the trip and, eventually, land ownership, you and your family will be have to work for an established farmer. (See list of benefits found in a discussion group message from Mississippi State University www.msstate.edu/listarchives/afrigeneas/199710/msg00025.html) Would you go?"

a. After garnering student responses, ask volunteers to briefly describe why? What would be their motivation to go?

Activity

Introduce indentured servitude using Background Information. Divide students into groups of 4 (make groups heterogenous) and pass out articles: Runaways and Indentured Servants and Transported Convicts, book reading, book reading, and Pre-Colonial America and North American Colonies. Assign each student a reading. Tell them that they are to become an expert on this article. While reading it, they should attempt to find answers to these four questions:

(teacher note: write these questions on the board)

1. Who were indentured servants?

2. What sorts of benefits were they supposedly given at the end of their servitude?

3. What are examples of laws regulating the actions and behavior of indentured servants?

4. How did the masters treat them?

(teacher note: tell students not to worry if they cannot find the answers to every question in their article, this is why they are doing group work, so that others in the group may have the information your article lacks).

(teacher note: briefly explain roles to students)

a. group leader - pick up and return materials, pass out materials, see that jobs are completed

b. scribe - take notes

c. reporter - report findings to class, including the article the group found most interesting

d. task master - make sure everyone stays on task and contributes equally to discussion

Allow students to pick roles (reporter, scribe, group leader, task master). Explain that after reading the articles and taking notes on their separate articles, they will have a discussion during which each student will go around and answer the four questions according to the information in their article.

Give students 20 minutes to complete this activity. Call on each reporter to report findings to group as a whole, teacher takes notes on the overhead, and students take notes on papers.

Closure

After all groups have presented, ask students if they would still go to the New World as an indentured servant, why or why not?

(teacher note: this debate will evaluate activity, how well students understand concepts of advantages/disadvantages, how well they understand the real life of indentured servants).

Homework Activity

Have students write 3 journal entries as if they were an indentured servant. Explain that they should write the journal as though they are an actual character, have a name, a description, and really try to understand what indentured servants were experiencing. Follow these broad instructions for writing the journals:

1st entry: a few days after they meet their master; examples: are they excited? scared? what sorts of things will they be doing? what is the farm like?

2nd entry: half way done with indenture; examples: what jobs are they doing? who do they spend time with? how does the master treat them? what are they not allowed to do?

3rd entry: a few days before they receive their freedom; examples: what will they receive? has it been a good experience? what will they do now? will they own indentured servants?

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