A form of unfree labor in which a person engaged in a contract to work for a number of years (usually 5 to 7) in return for passage to America and subsistence support during the period of indenture. Most indentured servants were members of the lowest classes in their home countries. Some were given a choice between imprisonment for debt or vagrancy and indenture. Half to two thirds of the Europeans who came to the American colonies between 1630 and the Revolutionary War were indentured. Of these approximately 225,000 people, about three quarters were under age 25. Many more men came under indenture than women, but women came as well. At the end of their indenture, servants were entitled to tools and provisions to set them on a path to independence. Some were offered land at the ends of their contracts. But the life of an indentured servant was hard. In the early years of the Virginia colony, for example, only one in six survived their indenture and became free people in the colonies.