Indentured Servitude: A Musical Introduction featuring “The Distressed Damsel”

Teaching Guide

Level

Elementary

Teaching Guide (PDF)

-downloadable PDF of the content on this page

You'll Use

Mini Doc

-a short film about the people who worked for years without wages to repay the cost of their voyage to America, followed by a song from the period sung in the voice of one of them

Slides

-a Google Slides deck with the Mini Doc plus Set It Up, Watch and Listen For, and Three Questions, to present to the class or assign for independent work

Set it Up (30 seconds)

“We’re going to watch a short film about people who came to America more than three hundred years ago. Most had no money for the trip, so they signed a paper promising to work for someone for years to pay for it. Some did not get a choice at all — they were sent, or tricked into coming, and had to work under the same kind of agreement. Before I press play: what do you think they were promised in return?”

Take three guesses and write them on the board. Leave them up. Play the video. Check the guesses against what the song describes.

Watch and Listen For

    • How many years most adults had to work — and what they were given at the end
    • The picture of the broadside near the end: a song printed on one side of a sheet of paper and sold in the street
    • When the song starts at 3:05 — what the young woman says about her food, her bed, and her work

Three Questions (after the video)

    1. Look at our guesses on the board. What were servants promised in return for the voyage?
    2. The song says she sleeps on a bed of straw and has nothing to eat while her mistress sits down to a meal. How is that different from what was promised?
    3. The song ends by telling other young women to stay home. Why would someone write a song to warn people?

Activity (20 minutes)

Promise and experience. Fold a paper in half. On one side, students list what an indentured servant was promised — the voyage, food, clothing, shelter, and a payment at the end. On the other, what the young woman in the song actually describes. Then talk about why someone might sign the paper anyway.

Other Resources

Heads Up

The song describes hunger, exhaustion, and sleeping on straw. In one line the young woman calls herself a slave — a word people in the 1600s used loosely. Indentured servitude and the chattel slavery of enslaved Africans were not the same: an indenture ended after a set number of years, and it was not passed on to a servant’s children. Worth saying plainly, so students do not come away thinking the two were alike.

Standards

C3 Framework (NCSS)

    • D2.His.2.3-5 — Compare life in specific historical time periods to life today.
    • D2.His.4.3-5 — Explain why individuals and groups during the same historical period differed in their perspectives.
    • D3.1.3-5 — Gather relevant information from multiple sources while using the origin, structure, and context to guide the selection.
    • D4.1.3-5 — Construct arguments using claims and evidence from multiple sources.

Florida — Social Studies (2023)

    • SS.5.A.4.1 — Identify the economic, political and socio-cultural motivation for colonial settlement.
    • SS.5.A.4.4 — Demonstrate an understanding of political, economic, and social aspects of daily colonial life in the thirteen colonies.

Literacy (Common Core ELA)

    • SL.5.2 — Summarize a written text read aloud or information presented in diverse media and formats, including visually, quantitatively, and orally.
    • RI.5.6 — Analyze multiple accounts of the same event or topic, noting important similarities and differences in the point of view they represent.

National Core Arts Standards — Music, Connecting

    • NCAS Anchor 11 — Relate artistic ideas and works with societal, cultural, and historical context to deepen understanding.
    • MU:Cn11.0.5a — Demonstrate understanding of relationships between music and the other arts, other disciplines, varied contexts, and daily life.