Slavery was a byproduct of indentured servitude. People of all races, and men, women, and children, were indentured servants.  The first black child born in America, Baby Williams, was born free in 1619. The first person in America to be sentenced to a lifetime of servitude was a white man. Most indentured servants became so through an arrangement whereby their masters paid their fare to America in exchange for them working for their masters for a period of time, usually about three to four years. Female indentured servants were being impregnated by their masters, and under English law, the men were responsible for the children. They usually even had physical custody. The men often made arrangements with the women to set them free in exchange for the women keeping the paternity of their children quiet. Hence, there were a lot of what one governor called "bastard" children (of all mixtures of races) running around the colonies--something which was intolerable, especially given that most of the European colonists were Puritans. Various colonies tried a multitude of methods for dealing with the problem. Laws came on the books. Gradually, white women were remanded to the custody of the churches. Black women, who were thought to be more lascivious than white women, were put out in the fields. Finally, the State of Virginia put the first law on the books tying slavery to the womb:  Children got by an Englishman upon a Negro woman shall be bond or free, according to the condition of the mother, and if any Christian shall commit fornication with a Negro man or woman, he'll pay double the fines of the former act.  In 1661, Virginia was the first state to invert English law to support what morphed into a slave system to solve the problem of illegitimate children in the colony. Slavery was passed by the mother, although no state, including Virginia, actually defined slavery. The status of white women increased dramatically to accommodate the fact that their children were free. (Racial slavery did already exist on a wide scale, but mainly in the Caribbean and Latin America, under Spanish, Portuguese, French, and Dutch laws. Under those laws, male slaves where favored for their ability to do very hard work. Female slaves were imported to produce children. However, only the male slaves could father those children and basically escape liability, because under the laws of those respective countries, men were still responsible for rearing their children. It should also be pointed out that unlike slavery here in the U.S., slavery in the rest of the world was not chattel slavery. In Latin America, for instance, slaves could sue their masters for maltreatment.)  I think that it is important to note that in the very early years of the colonies, the vast majority of Black people were mainly voluntary immigrants. Over a period of about 40 years, Black people became involuntary immigrants and enslaved, as various discriminatory laws came on the books. (That's why immigration issues need to be paid careful attention to.) See, what a lot of people don't seem to understand is that once you own the womb, you will eventually own the men too, since a little more than half of the children will be male. (This is why I'm pro-choice, but that's another issue.) Since black women were put out in the fields, their children went with them strapped to their backs or working at their sides. However, there was still a problem, which the fines tried to address: the children of black men and white women were free. Chattel slavery had not taken root yet, so slaves at first did have some freedom to come and go. At one time, North Carolina tried enslaving white women along with black men. That didn't work. (Too many white women were actually enslaved.) What did? Lynching. So it became the mechanism that was used to keep black men and white women from having free brown babies, although even black women and children and even white men were lynched too from time to time.  By the way, Native Americans did not make good slaves, because they knew the land too well and just simply ran away.  I can't write an entire paper right now, so here are some references and these references lead to other references:  A. Leon Higginbotham, Jr. In the Matter of Color: Race and the American Legal Process, The Colonial Period. (New York, Oxford University Press, 1978), pg. 43.  Paula Giddings. When and Where I Enter: The Impact of Black Women On Race and Sex in America. Harper Paperbacks, Second Edition, 1996.
CHICAGO -- A family history website claims it has linked President Barack Obama to the first documented African slave in the American colonies.