The year 1619 is an important date in Virginia’s history. That year a ship flying a Dutch flag, the White Lion, arrived and changed Jamestown and future colonies. The ship carried a group of enslaved West Central African people to Jamestown. The arrival of African people to the colonies affected the cultural landscape and workforce for centuries to come and has left a lasting legacy on the United States of America.

Evidence shows that the African people who arrived in Virginia were captured and enslaved during the Portuguese wars in West Central Africa, in present-day Angola, during the previous year. They were most likely Kimbundu-speaking peoples from the Kingdom of Ndongo and from a heavily-populated area, which included the royal capital, Kabasa. This means many could have been from an urban area and may have been familiar with European languages, trade items, clothing and customs. They may also have been introduced to Christianity, because Portuguese law required all enslaved persons to be baptized before arriving in America.

West Central African society

The civilization that the 1619 West Central African people left behind was highly developed and included both walled urban centers and rural regions. The African people brought useful skills and knowledge to the Jamestown colony, including farming. They may have known how to grow crops such as tobacco. Since tobacco agriculture in Virginia demanded much labor, this made the African people a useful addition by the English to the colony. The introduction of the West Central African people made the expansion of the tobacco economy possible.

In West Central African society, women were often in charge of farming, very much like the women in Powhatan society. Like Powhatan men, West Central African men were also hunters. Some men also may have had experience tending herds of cattle, goats, chickens and guinea fowl. Unlike the Powhatan people, African people produced iron tools and weapons. They wove cloth from materials such as tree bark and cotton. This cloth was used for decorative purposes, as well as for clothing. Like English and Powhatan fashions, dress was one way that they could communicate status and social role to one another. West Central people dressed in different styles depending on their status.

The West Central African people who were transported to Virginia most likely arrived with nothing more than the clothes they wore, their knowledge, skills and customs. They were probably expected to adopt the English manner of dress to suit their new roles. They did not speak the language of the colonists or the Powhatan, and their culture had no tradition of written language. However, if members of the original group who arrived in 1619 came from the same general region of West Central Africa, they probably had little difficulty communicating with each other. Some may have had knowledge of Portuguese from their contacts with traders in their homeland and may have heard other European languages spoken aboard the ships that transported them from Africa. When Virginia became more involved in the slave trade later in the 17th century and the numbers of African people transported to the colony increased, many more African regions and language traditions were represented. These later arrivals may have encountered as much difficulty communicating with each other as they did with the English and the Powhatan people.