August 20, 1619

First Africans in Virginia

The White Lion lands captive Africans at Point Comfort

The White Lion's captain exchanged human beings for groceries, because his ship needed food.

Late August 1619, at Point Comfort

In late August 1619 the White Lion reached Point Comfort in the English colony of Virginia, carrying what the colonial secretary John Rolfe called '20 and odd' captive Africans. Governor George Yeardley and the cape merchant Abraham Peirsey acquired them from Captain John Colyn Jope in exchange for provisions the ship needed.

Rolfe's letter says only 'about the latter end of August.' The familiar 20 August is not established by it; the National Park Service now gives 25 August as the believed date.

Where they came from

The White Lion was an English privateer operating under Dutch authority, not the Dutch warship Rolfe assumed. It and the Treasurer had seized the Africans from the Portuguese slave ship São João Bautista in the Gulf of Mexico, which was carrying enslaved people from West Central Africa toward New Spain.

Research indicates the Virginia captives were probably Kimbundu-speaking people taken amid Portuguese-Imbangala campaigns against Ndongo, though their precise individual origins are not documented.

Where they went

Some of the Africans were taken upriver to Jamestown and Flowerdew Hundred. Three or four days later the Treasurer reached Point Comfort with more captives and sold two or three before sailing on to Bermuda.

'Twenty and odd' is deliberately imprecise. Virginia's muster of March 1620 counted 32 Africans in the colony — 15 male and 17 female.

Their legal classification under 1619 Virginia law is uncertain, because race-based hereditary slavery had not yet been codified. Their factual condition — capture, sale, and involuntary labour — is not uncertain.

Sources

Researched 24 Aug 2026 6 sources not yet audited Date disputed

How this was checked

Researched from the web into a fact sheet and rewritten from that sheet. This article has not yet had an independent model audit. How the pipeline works →

Date disputed. Sources disagree; the research places it at 1619-08.

What the sources leave uncertain

The primary record says only “about the latter end of August.” August 20 is not established by Rolfe's letter. The National Park Service now gives August 25 as the believed date, but the safest source-based date is late August 1619.
“Twenty and odd” is deliberately imprecise. Comparison with the 1620 muster suggests the White Lion may have landed closer to 29 or 30 people, but births, deaths and unrecorded arrivals prevent certainty.
The captives' legal classification under 1619 Virginia law is uncertain because race-based hereditary slavery had not yet been codified. Their factual condition—capture, sale and involuntary labor—is not uncertain.
Their association with Ndongo and Kimbundu-speaking communities is strongly supported but probabilistic rather than individually documented.