European labor fully supplied the English colonies until sugar arrived in the 1640s

Evidence

It appears that the earliest investors in the colonies—lord proprietors, politicians, and merchants according to Pares—had economic designs that at first could be met by a modest labor pool. As independent venturers, the landed rich seemed most frequently to anticipate that their colonies would produce an income resembling in form the manorial dues to which they were accustomed in England. The joint companies, in which some lords along with merchant and public representatives of the bourgeoisie also took an interest, were typically more trade oriented. These companies were promoted for the colonial cultivation of cotton, tobacco, indigo, ginger, and the production of extractive industries such as timber, glass, iron, and precious metals. Thus, until the arrival of sugar in the early 1640s, and the development of large plantations, labor was adequately supplied by Europeans: indentured peasants, political outcasts produced at varying times by national and civil wars, and poor or orphaned females (only some of whom possessed “bad reputations”). — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 586