Were Isabell and Antonio Tucker, two of the first Africans to come in 1619, Indentured servants?

Question

Or were they permanent slaves?

Answer 1

Possibly. Another Antonio, a.k.a. Anthony Johnson, was. On first sight, it seems not to have made that much a difference :

"The first blacks to arrive in British North America were indentured servants rather than slaves. One of them, Antonio, landed at Jamestown, Virginia, in 1621, and anglicized his name to Anthony Johnson. Johnson was granted his freedom and eventually became a prosperous landowner. The passage below describes his experience and reflects the declining status of blacks.
___________________________________________

Anthony Johnson, an African, arrived in Virginia in 1621 with only the name "Antonio." Caught as a young man in the Portuguese slavetrading net, he had passed from one trader to another in the New World until he reached Virginia. There he was purchased by Richard Bennett and sent to work at Warrasquoke, Bennett's plantation. Antonio, anglicized to Anthony, labored on the Bennett plantation for 20 years, slave in fact if not in law, for legally defined bondage was still in the formative stage. During this time he married Mary, another African and fathered four children. In the 1640s, Anthony and Mary Johnson gained their freedom after half a lifetime of servitude. They chose the surname Johnson to signify their new status."

"BLACKS IN BRITISH NORTH AMERICA: THE FIRST ARRIVALS" in "THE AFRICAN AMERICAN EXPERIENCE: A HISTORY OF BLACK AMERICANS from 1619 to 1890", Professor Quintard Taylor, Department of History, University of Washington : http://unitus.org/FULL/afro-1.pdf