In the 17th century ,during the Colonial Experience, the European colonists separated the 13 colonies into three distinctive groups: The New England, Middle and Southern colonies. However, the plantation system was spread between the New England and Southern colonies because there were crops grown in these colonies that required intensive labor work such as tobacco, cotton, rice and sugar cane. Unfortunately, approximately 95% of these plantation workers were women and children despite many issues. As described on the Spartacus Educational website, the writer illustrates that, “Slaves were in the fields from sunrise to sunset and at harvest time they did an eighteen hour day. Women worked the same hours as the men and pregnant women were expected to continue until their child was born.” These were some of the many issues that made the Colonial Experience in the United States a negative one.
Coming from the West Indies and African countries, many of these women were forced to work on these long plantations because of the tremendous demand for laborers by the Europeans. Although the African American women shared some of their workload with white mistresses and servant girls, they were still given the hardest tasks on the plantation, as explained in an article by Aaron Sinn entitled, “Economic Role of African American Women on the Plantation.” Sinn continues to explain that:
Slave women spent a good deal of time working indoors, too. Some worked to mend and make fabrics and clothing. Others helped within the kitchen and around the home, cleaning and picking up after the plantation owners and their offspring. Black women were often shifted in and out of indoor jobs and field jobs as both punishment and reward for winning or losing favor from the plantation owners (Sinn 1).
However, many of these skills used by these women were learned working in their homelands in similar jobs. This leads some people to ask what is the difference between working in their homelands and on the plantations in America? The answer is, they weren’t forced to carry out these tasks in their homes and when they were carrying a child, they weren’t forced to work during their pregnancy.
Additionally, overworking these women (which later caused many of their deaths), led the plantation owners to convince the few left to have as much children as they could. Child-bearing started around the age of thirteen, and by twenty the women slaves would be expected to have four or five children. To encourage childbearing some population owners promised women slaves their freedom after they had produced fifteen children (Spartacus Educational).
Born into slavery, children of slaves were considered slaves from birth. Although children younger than ten years old were rarely separated from their families, many unfortunately separated when plantations were sold. A slave’s diet (including children) consisted of weekly rations of corn and left over meat if they didn’t have a farm. Consuming this small serving of food, the children were required to work on tobacco plantations as young as the age of seven (Slavery on the Plantation). Luckily, younger children ran small errands or played on the field most of the day.
