Until recently, historians have had to depend on slave owners' records and diaries to reconstruct the daily lives of slaves. These accounts indicate that owners tried to feed their labor force as cheaply as possible.

In a diary of his year as a plantation tutor in Virginia in the 1770's, Philip Vickers Fithian notes that the slaves were provided with a weekly allowance of "a peck of Corn, & a pound of Meat a Head!" Fithian goes on to mention that the owner of this particular plantation is, "by far the most humane to his Slaves of any in these parts!" *

Culling data like this from various accounts, historians estimate that an average weekly ration for each adult slave would have been something like one peck (or eight quarts) of corn meal, a pound of salt beef or pork and a little molasses or salt fish. That's a little over 2,000 calories a day, not nearly enough for hard manual labor. How did slaves survive?

Again, evidence discovered in the sub-floor pits helps clear up the mystery. While laws prohibited slaves from owning guns, flint and other gun parts excavated from the pits reveal that slaves did in fact have access to firearms. Bone fragments suggest that slaves hunted and fished to supplement their meager rations.

Learn more about slave rations at George Washington's Mount Vernon.

* from "Journal & Letters of Philip Vickers Fithian 1773-1774: A Plantation Tutor of the Old Dominion." Edited by Hunter Dickinson Farish. Colonial Williamsburg, Incorporated, Williamsburg, VA. 1957.