Richard Frethorne's Experience As An Indentured Servant

The ‘New World’, the thought sends a romantic image of a kind of Eden in which the Europeans were keen to cash in on. For the poor, this Eden was out of reach. However, as the need of labor increased, those modest pig farmers could leave their old life behind and set off to the new world. All they had to do was become an indentured servant for a set number of years (Sheflin, Virginia). Because indentured servants were the lowest class, the conditions the colonists of Virginia were living in, such as illness, lack of nutrients, and Native conflict reflect how much worse it was for those in indentured servitude (Oaks, S3-3). Guns, germs, and steel. The words echo in the mind at the thought of those first European men to step foot in the ‘New world’. Though the indigenous people were by far the most effected by the microbes brought over from Europe (Sheflin, Dynamics of first contact), that did not leave the British colonist in Virginia immune to illness (Oaks, S3-3). Based on the account from Richard Frethorne, regarding his grim experience as an indentured servant, the new land seemed to “cause much sickness”, which took its toll on the body’s of all the Virginia colonists (Oaks, S3-3). When illness broke out, there was no nutrients for the servant, nothing to give strength to the ill
According to Frethorne, he was granted only gruel and peas since his feet touched the new land (Oaks, S3-3). In the quest for God and gold, the colonists did not give priority to their need for food when they journeyed to a new part of the world (Sheflin, Virginia). In consequence, food was short for everyone in the colony. Frethorne writes how they had expected to see deer, but has witnessed none. And though he admits to seeing birds, as a servant he was never allowed to go after them (Oaks, S3-3). If the land was not harsh enough on the European colonists, they were also in perpetual fear of invasion (Oaks,