My Irish Catholic indentured servant ancestors, the McGinnis family, arrived at the Livingston plantation south of Rensselaer, NY in 1720...
Every male in the family 10 and up had to work for the Livingstons until age 21 to pay back the passage costs etc...
At age 21 they were free from their obligation and could strike out on their own...They were not slaves but servants for an arranged period......
My ancestor, Timothy McGinnis became a fur trapper and a trader, and a very rich man...
Indentured servants were never slaves...
The black African slaves were never indentured servants they were slaves for life...
My family travelled from Ireland as passengers on a ship free to move around on the deck and in the cabin area...probably steerage...
African slaves were chained up spoon fashion for most of the trip and hardly saw the light of day...many of them died on the ‘middle passage’
Actually it was prudent for a slaver to rotate cargo to the deck for sunshine and clean up etc
Keeping cargo alive meant more profit
There is a book on this by Hugh Crow dates I think from 1830
Course it’s dismissed in today’s climate
What you describe for slaves came later.
The first Africans brought were as indentured servants, bought from other Africans who had captured them as war-booty. They were literate Christians, with specific obligations that went both ways.
The slavery began later in the 17th century, and it took a while store the industrial shipment of slaves was developed.