In 1619, Virginia was a sparsely populated island which was struggling to make the colony profitable for human but the colonists were devastated by disease, death and Native-American attacks. So when a badly damaged Dutch ship arrived on their island carrying twenty kidnapped Africans, the colony offered food and services to the Dutchmen in exchange for the human cargo. The colonists had no model for human slavery so the Africans joined the Europeans to serve them in their fields, in exchange for seven years of hard labour they would be earning land and food.
