Europeans attempting to found colonies on the North American mainland encountered an abundance of land and other natural resources and a chronic shortage of labor to exploit them. Establishing settlements, building forts to shelter colonists from hostile Native Americans and rival European powers, clearing land for farming, learning how to raise suitable crops for food in unfamiliar environments, erecting houses, and building up herds of Old World livestock required massive amounts of labor. Moreover, in order to procure essential supplies from their homelands, settlers had either to produce products in demand in Europe or to earn income to buy them through trade with other regions. With capital for development and workers willing to emigrate to the new settlements in short supply, colonists soon turned to novel solutions to alleviate their labor problems.

Initially some aristocratic investors expected to develop their holdings with European tenants, but the ready availability of land precluded tenancy as a viable option in most regions. Others hoped to persuade or force Native Americans to work for them, a strategy that also proved futile on the mainland. In the early seventeenth century, England was perceived to be overpopulated, so British colonists turned first to fellow countrymen to fill the labor gap. English men and women too poor to pay their passage to the New World were recruited to come to the colonies under indenture, working off the cost of transportation with a number of years of unpaid service.