Andrew F. Smith

African American Food: To The Civil War: Africans Come to America

Appears in
Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America
Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America

By Andrew F. Smith

Published 2004

  • About

There is some evidence for the presence of Africans in the Americas in pre-Columbian times. Among Christopher Columbus’s crew in 1492 was Alonso Pietro, the pilot of the Niña, who was an African. African slaves were part of the early Spanish colonies in Florida and the Carolinas, and some probably escaped to join the Indians. What is generally not in dispute is that a Dutch man-of-war came into the river at Jamestown in 1619 and sold twenty “Negroes” into forced service.

It is possible that these first Virginia “Negroes” were indentured like the British undesirables, criminals, captured foreign soldiers, prostitutes, debtors, “ne’er-do-wells,” kidnapped children, poor children put into service by their parents, gypsies, would-be farmers, unemployed soldiers, “restless souls,” and adventurers who were in servitude for a contractual period before becoming free to advance in the colonies. But Virginia documents make clear that within two generations most “Africans” were in permanent slavery.