Unveiling the First Africans in America 1619

[KIKnight]

In 1619 the first documented "twenty and odd" Africans were brought to the English occupied territory in what would become North America landing at Old Point Comfort in Hampton, Virginia, today’s Fort Monroe. In 2019 the City of Hampton and our Nation will be commemorating the 400th anniversary of their arrival, where Project 1619, will be erecting a national monument in their honor.

[KIKnight]

My thoughts on the 1619/1620 Muster.....
Historians have long believed that the earliest documented Africans to arrive in English North America were brought in August of 1619, courtesy of a Dutch Captain. The evidence was confirmed in the earliest known count of the inhabitants of Virginia, known as the ‘List of the Living’, compiled after the Great Massacre of 1622. However, in the last decade, new discoveries have been made and some Historians now believe there was an earlier notation. Found in the Ferrar papers, the two page “General Muster of Virginia” dated March 1619 lists, at the bottom of the second page, thirty-two (32) Africans.
Assuming that those same 32 Africans were there five months later when the “twenty and odd” arrive, there would have been no less than 53 Africans. The “List of the Living” completed after the Indian massacre of 1622 indicates that there were 23 Africans at that time. Historical records indicate that no Africans were killed in the 1622 massacre. That means that no less than 30 Africans died between August 1619 and 1622. Very unlikely. If this were the case, where would the 32 Africans have come from? How did they arrive? There are no records that indicate the arrival of any Africans prior to August of 1619 from England. If not England, where? In 1619, Virginia was an English settlement and all inhabitants were from England, with the exception of the occasional Frenchman or Italian.
Since the discovery of the Ferrar Papers, Martha W. McCartney proposed that the March 1619 muster was written in the old-style which dates it to 1620. But if the Muster was completed in 1620, the number of Africans jumped from ‘twenty and odd’ to 32 in less than a year?”
Another interesting fact. The initial report from the Secretary of Virginia sent to England regarding the arrival of the "twenty and odd" was first read by Edwin Sandys and Ferrar of the Virginia Company of London in Feb/March of 1620, approximately the same time Historian Martha McCartney proposed the document was written.

My Opinion: The 23 Africans that are listed on the “List of the Living” are the same Africans that arrived in August 1619. They were the first Africans to arrive at the English settlement of Virginia. There were none before them. The 32 Africans listed on the March 1619 General Muster of Virginia existed only on paper. Concocted to cover the tracks of piracy by an English aristocrat and his cronies. Fate & Freedom - Book I, The Middle Passage gives a new view of the political posturing and corruption surrounding the arrival of the first "twenty and odd" ultimately turning the declining settlement of Virginia into America's first English colony.

[moixin]

1527
Álvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca shipwrecked in Florida (1527). There were four survivors, one was black. They went walking from Florida to Northen Mexico.
They survived thanks to the black man, because Indians thought he was a sorcerer.
Cabeza de Vaca wrote a book about his experience, "Shipwrecked".