Quite a few Europeans originally came to America as Indentured Servants. Basically a contract slave. The contract was for a specific length of time. Once the contract was over, they were free. There were also many Europeans that came over on English prison ships. Those people probably had it the worse off. Forced to do the dirty work of the English at the point of a gun. That was standard practices back in those days.
Yes, this was common. One of my ancestors agreed to work aboard ship to pay for his family’s passage to America in the mid-seventeen hundreds. He was an inexperienced seaman and fell from the ships rigging and was killed. When they arrived in America his wife and child were sold into indentured servitude to pay off the fare. They almost died while traveling to find family after they were released.