Indentured Servants

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Indentured Servants

Indentured servitude was the institutional arrangement devised to increase labor mobility from Europe (particularly England) to America, and it was the labor system that preceded American slavery. Its emergence in Virginia in the seventeenth century can be seen as a development expedient to the circumstances surrounding the colony. Indentured servitude was practically the only way in which a poor person could get to the colonies and planters could be supplied with cheap labor. Richard Frethorne's document written in 1623, The Experiences of an Indentured Servant, legalized the master-servant relationship, specified the kind of labor to be performed, the length of time to be served, and the dues owed to the servant at the completion of his term.

In Frethorne's letter home to his parents, he draws a revealing picture of the deteriorating relations between the English settlers and the Indians that is consistent with the history of Jamestown in the period between the two attacks on the colony by the Powhatan chief Openchancanough. Both attacks were in retaliation for specific incidents of murder and depredation on the part of the English, but were responses, more generally, to English expansion into native lands and the resulting erosion of native life ways. The writer's candor about his own experience is compelling. He used vivid details to describe his discontent, deprivation, and discomfort. The small specifics of daily life (quantities and kinds of food, items of clothing, catalogs of implements) and the data of survival and death (lists of deceased colonists, trade and barter statistics, numerical estimates of enemy Indians and their military strength, itemized accounts of provisions, and rations...

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... but I am the intended audience of the people or group of people who came across this letter and decided that it would be worthwhile for people to read. I am their intended audience and they have positioned me as a reader to feel pity and to gain a better understanding of life as an indentured servant in the early 1600's.

I am the audience that was intended secondly and I perform my job as audience member well. I pity Richard Frethorne's state and I peek into the world of North America in the early 1600's. I read this personal letter written only for the eyes of Richard's parents and others who could help him and question my place as an audience member. Would Frethorne's words, style, or tone have changed if he knew that this letter would be used as a historical reference? Would Frethorne have written the letter at all if he knew that it would be read by thousands?

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