English settler colonies introduced a new market structure to the Native peoples of the
Chesapeake watershed. Alongside trade in goods traders and merchants exchanged peoples for
labor. The Eastern Shore of the Virginia colony provides an interesting case study that
provides a clear picture of the importance of Native laborers alongside African and English
laborers in the early plantation economy. Power dynamics in colonial Virginia were
characterized by social hierarchies economic interests and the exercise of authority by
influential individuals. By examining cases of illegal indenture and enslavement of Native
peoples by Colonel Edmund Scarburgh in the 17th century one can see that Scarburgh emerges as
an unstoppable vigilante both at the time and in historical memory because of his accumulation
of wealth and power through the Indigenous slave trade as well as his transatlantic trade
interests. Physically and in many ways legally isolated from the rest of the Virginia colony
the case study presented herein serves as a window into the power machinations and ambitions of
one man and his desire to build his plantation empire unchecked by any conventions or rules of
law.
