"Others Not Christians in the Service of the English": Interpreting the Status of Africans and African Americans in Early Virginia

[...]during the third of his three retaliatory raids on the Panamanian isthmus in the early 1570s, Francis Drake entered into an alliance with maroon communities of runaway black slaves known as the "Cimarrones," who played a crucial role in his successful ambush of a mule train carrying a small fortune in Peruvian silver overland from Venta de Chagre to Nombre de Dios.6 Yet, aside from Hawkins's slaving voyages, which were exceptional among English commercial ventures to Africa in this period, these early encounters with Africans took place under very different circumstances than what later would be the case during the Anglo-Spanish War (1585-1604). [...]throughout this initial period, Anglo-African interaction for the most part occurred in contexts where the balance of power was not in favor of the English, and in such instances, they had no choice but to recognize the humanity of Africans and deal with them as equals.7 As historian April Hatfield has noted, however, John Hawkins's activities make clear that by this same time Englishmen were also more than willing to accept the idea that enslaved Africans were "merchandise" that one could "make triall" of in Atlantic commerce, not unlike bolts of cloth, metal goods, or other commodities, and it was this alternative attitude that would prevail among the English corsairs after formal hostilities with Spain began in 1585. [...]not a single example of a "Negro" bringing a complaint of mistreatment before the county courts can be found in the extant order books of the county courts, and in two of the three known instances where one sued for being unjustly detained beyond their term of service, the master involved countered by claiming his accuser was bound for life. [...]it is worth noting that in the last and most widely cited of these three instances-the 1656 suit of Elizabeth Key-the pleas submitted by her attorney William Grinstead did not dispute testimony that his client was born around 1630 or that her mother was a "woman slave," and thus despite the fact that Key eventually won her freedom, the record of her case offers perhaps the clearest evidence available that the practice of holding Africans in permanent bondage dated back at least to the late 1620s.20 Material in the court records also demonstrates that enslavement for "Negroes" was a perpetual as well as lifetime condition. [...]more than half of the pre-1662 surviving wills and deeds that mention female "Negroes" also con- vey rights to their