Indetured servitude is when a person's passage to America is payed for an American Colonist and then the foreigner must work for the american for a certain amount of time (usually 7 years) and then the person is free to do what they please.
The term Indenture comes from the medieval English "indenture of retainer" — a legal contract written in duplicate on the same sheet, with the copies separated by cutting along a jagged (toothed, hence the term "indenture") line so that the teeth of the two parts could later be refitted to confirm authenticity.
Certainly in England an Indenture was commonly used as a form of sealed contract or agreement, especially where land and buildings were concerned.
In the case of bonds, indenture is a legal document which shows the restrictions, pledge and promises of the instrument.
Indentured servitude is not identical with involuntary servitude and slavery.
Ideally, an indentured servant's lot in the establishment would be no harder than that of a contemporary apprentice, who was similarly bound by contract and owed hard, unpaid labour while "serving his time." At the end of the allotted time, an indentured servant was to be given a new suit of clothes and set loose.
Indentured servitude was a method of increasing the number of residents/emigrants, especially in the British colonies.
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