In a message dated 4/10/99 11:17:35 AM Central Daylight Time, Lovely@prodigy.net writes: > I would like some information if anyone out there...I would like to know how > and when did the first Slave came to be here in the United States, who > bought him here and from where?...Or tell me where to look so I can find > this information... > Can't answer all your questions but in Making Thirteen Colonies, part of her ten-volume United States history for young people, The Story of US, Joy Hakim writes that in 1619 a Dutch captain brought the first slaves to Jamestown, Virginia. The slaves had been kidnapped by African traders, sold to the Dutch captain, and then sold to the colonists in Virginia. Originally these slaves were like indentured servants, who worked only a few years and then were free. After a time, the colonists stopped granting them freedom and enacted laws to perpetuate slavery. These were the first slaves in the English colonies of the East. I think there may have been African slaves in the Spanish territories of what became the Southwest US earlier than this. The first Africans were brought to America, to the West Indies, in 1503; and slavery was established there by 1510. The Spanish imported Africans because they had discovered that Native Americans did not make good slaves. Although Joy Hakim's books were written for the junior high level (because she found standard textbooks so boring), they are extremely readable and interesting to adults also. Sara Binkley Tarpley