Women in the Americas in early modern North America. Throughout the Americas, bondage existed—in warmer climates, where plantation systems developed, or in the northern areas, where women were either transported as criminals or worked as indentured servants. As early as the 1530s, Portugal began using slave labor in Brazil to work sugarcane plantations. Initially, the Portuguese used indigenous people as slaves, but in 1574, the crown decreed that unless the native people were cannibals, already slaves, or were spoils of a "just war", they could not be enslaved. The Spanish also used native people as forced labor, but because under the "encomienda" system, neither
Women in the Americas most North American women were farmers, and had accepted supporting roles to their men, who performed hunting, trade, and diplomatic functions. Conquest by and contact with Europeans brought extreme changes to all of the inhabitants of the Americas. Disease and a lack of immunity to African and European diseases killed more than 80% of the Native population of the Americas within the first two centuries of the Colonial period. The main European groups which colonized and fought over control of the region included the Dutch, English, French, Portuguese, and Spanish. They established economic systems which benefited themselves, taking land and