Jamestown (USA) (AFP)

Scratching the earth in suffocating heat, Chardé Reid, a young American black archaeologist, tries to go back in time to the remains of Angela's life, landed after an atrocious crossing, 400 years ago among the first African slaves arrived on the territory of the future United States.

"I feel a lot of links between my family history and what began here in 1619," says the 32-year-old woman to AFP, saying herself descendant of a white maid and an African slave .

These early Africans "are our forefathers, not only the ancestors of African-American culture but also more widely of all American culture," she says.

Under his trowel, bricks appear: the remains of buildings built on the site of the rich house where lived, slave, Angela in Jamestown, first permanent English colony established in America, in what later became the State of Virginia .

This verdant land sloping gently towards the James River is not so different today from what the first Africans arrived on the same bank in August 1619.

At the time, Portuguese and Spanish ripped Africans from their lands for nearly a century to send them to the Americas.

Originally from the kingdom of Ndongo, in what is now Angola, Angela had initially been embarked on a Portuguese ship from Luanda to Veracruz.

Traveling in appalling conditions, about a third of the 350 slaves on board perished during the crossing.

And before they reached their destination, two pirate ships attacked the ship and sequestered about sixty Africans, says historian James Horn, president of the association Jamestown Rediscovery in charge of excavations.

The ship "White Lion" arrived first "towards the end of August", reported at the time John Rolfe, rich English colonist famous for having been the husband of Pocahontas, daughter of the chief of Powhatan, a tribe of the environs of Jamestown.

Arrived at Point Comfort, now Fort Monroe, the pirates exchanged "twenty-some" Africans for food.

A few days later, the "Treasurer" arrived in turn, delivering another small group. Among them was Angela, "the first African woman ever to be named in Virginia," says Bly Straube, curator at the Jamestown Settlement Museum.

"Her story is a bit like + Eve +", at the origins of everything, she says.

Their arrival marks the beginning of a fatal history of the United States: 250 years of slavery, the trafficking of millions of Africans, followed by a long period of segregation whose after effects still mark the American society.

A historical "paradox," according to James Horn, the first Africans arrived in Jamestown shortly after the holding of the first New World Legislature in the small village church on July 30, 1619.

Strange confluence between the "first expression of our democratic experience" and newcomers "deprived of their rights, their identities," said James Horn.

- "In their footsteps" -

The story of slavery in the United States is "in fact the most powerful story of survival ever told," said Terry Brown, the first black American official at the Fort Monroe National Monument.

With his team, he is preparing a great weekend of ceremonies, from August 23 to 25, to celebrate the "contribution" of Africans to American society.

"The more we all talk together, the easier it is to fight against the poison of racism," he continues under his hat.

Terry Brown himself went in search of his past gone, discovering, through a DNA test, his Cameroonian roots.

"It's very moving because every day I cross the bridge" to the Fort "and every time I think about the fact that they came here, 400 years ago, who would have imagined I would be a day here, walking in their footsteps? "

While the other African premieres - "17 women and 15 men from Ndongo or Kongo lived in Virginia early 1620" according to James Horn - remained anonymous forever, Angela appears on two rare documents listing the population of the small colony in 1624 and 1625, under the name of "Angelo".

Angela or Angelo: Historians debate what was really his first name, probably given by the Portuguese. But all agree that she was a slave to the wealthy Pierce family. She had to work at home and in the orchard.

- "Hereditary" slavery -

Angela was probably lodged with white servants, according to historians.

It was not until forty years later, around 1660, that several British colonies in America decreed that the status of slave would now be transmitted by the mother, bringing a new hereditary and fundamentally racial dimension, to slavery.

At the same time, they prohibited intermarriage. A prohibition that will continue in some American states until the twentieth century.

After 1625, Angela disappears from the records. But his name is now more than ever in the spotlight in Jamestown.

Research on the first Africans "reflect a more complete history of the past of the United States, with which we are still struggling," said Chardé Reid, saying however "optimistic".

"We are witnessing a profound change, and it's really amazing to be part of it."

© 2019 AFP