In the seventeenth century life was harsh for the southern colonies. Many were killed due to diseases on the Chesapeake land, and families were so small that the men outnumbered the women. The tobacco economy used the American servants for hard labor, who wanted to become landowners and become wealthy in the future. Slaves soon began to be imported from Africa in the late 1600s, and became important for the economy. In the South, slaves died fast, but soon the numbers of them expanded by reproduction, and later they developed an African-American way of living.