The first black men and women arrived in mainland North America in the sixteenth century, often accompanying European explorers. For the next century or so, they continued to trickle onto the continent in small numbers, often not from Africa itself but from Europe, the Antilles, or other parts of the Atlantic littoral. Dubbed “Atlantic Creoles” because of their connection with the ocean that linked Africa, Europe, and the Americas, many of these first arrivals spoke the language of their enslavers and were familiar with the various religions, commercial conventions, and systems of jurisprudence of the Atlantic. Entering frontier societies in which Europeans also worked in some form of bound labor (indentured servitude being the most prominent),
