In public schools long ago I was miseducated about the first European settlers in America. I learned back then that the settlers were particularly devout Christians seeking religious freedom or that they came to the New World to settle on unused land and make it fruitful.
In fact, most early settlers were shipped here against their will. They were sent as indentured servants to do the work. Great Britain hoped, in this way, to rid itself of vagabonds, orphans, thieves, prostitutes and the unproductive poor.
In the New World they could work hard or die. Either way it solved a British problem.
People that Hillary Clinton might have called "deplorables" became indentured servants without pay for up to nine years.
For example, a man convicted of robbery in 1633 had his property sold and given to his victims. He was sentenced to three years as an indentured servant. His daughter (a child, I suspect) was sentenced to 14 years as a servant. It would be the duty of her new American master to see that she was raised properly--that was standard at the time.
There were, in 1633, two classes of people even lower than indentured servants: American Indians and "strangers" (enslaved black people).
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