A Dutch slave trader exchanged his cargo of Africans for food in 1619. The Africans became indentured servants, similar in legal position to many poor Englishmen who traded several years of labor in exchange for passage to America.
My post 204 mentioned slavery in New York that began in 1626. I did find a more accurate description of slavery in New York, probably the source for the Wikipedia link I posted in 204. Here is the more accurate link that says essentially the same thing: More accurate source.
Spain established settlements/colonies within what is now the continental US earlier than England or Holland established their colonies. Here is a site that mentions slavery in Florida as early as 1565[Link]:
Four and a half centuries ago, St. Augustine was the hub of the slave trade in Spanish colonial Florida, a distinction that continued through the early 1800s.
The slave trade was part of the capital city's economy from its founding in 1565, when Spanish explorer and founder Pedro Menendez de Aviles included black slaves among the New World's first Spanish settlers.
"The Spanish Crown was one of the largest slaveholders, workers on the defense works," said St. Augustine historian Susan R. Parker. And, though many of the records from that period are lost, documents from the Catholic Church reveal slavery's deep roots in North Florida's history.
In 1606, one year before the founding of Jamestown, Va., the first documented slave birth was recorded in St. Augustine. Agustin was baptized in the Catholic faith. He was the son of Agustin and Francisca, both listed as slaves in church baptismal records.
There already was slavery among the native peoples before Europeans arrived. For example, in Mexico and Central America [Link] and in New Mexico where Indians were made slaves and had slaves themselves [Link 2]:
According to the reports of the first Europeans to visit the New World, slavery was almost universal in what is now Mexico and Central America. Theoretically, with the arrival of Europeans, that should have changed.
Yes, I’ve studied these laws for years in different contexts. See Fogel, “Without Consent or Contract,” David Brion David, “History of Slavery in the Western World.” The major issue is the terminology of “slave” that disappeared in Europe and was replaced with these other categories, but the law did not catch up with the terms until the mid-1600s. Until the early 1700s, there was NO presumed racial slavery in the US, but I do think the evidence shows considerable more leeway in calling blacks “slaves” rather than servants or indentures.