Race Relations in Jamestown
America would probably not exist as a multi-cultural society today if not for the lessons learned at Jamestown. The Virginia Company of London charter even instructed the colonists: "care not to offend the naturals," and "trade with them for corn" and "hire them as guides." Thus set the initial stage of race relations with the Powhatan Indians, who had lived in Virginia for 10,000 years!
Africans first came to Virginia in the early 1500s — almost a century before the English permanently settled Jamestown in 1607 — as explorers and as members of Spanish and French Jesuit missions. Most of them settled in the Appalachian region, living among Native Americans and the Portugese. But the Africans who came to live in Jamestown with the English were indentured servants, like half of the early colonists.
