[Gulauur]

In the US?

Policy in many colonies was to absorb or replace native populations. Theoretically creating a peaceful avenue for geographic expansion along with Christian-izing heathens thought to be more closely related in appearance with racial features easier to eradicate in one to two generations.
The reality was more complex, especially as more European immigrants flooded in. People often hid native ancestry, and in parts of the North natives were ostracized more than blacks and mullattoes as a greater threat.

It was envisioned as a white country (a new world for proper white Europeans to escape the decadence of Old Europe and create a land according to the will of God).
Africans were perceived as harder to absorb, with litte impetus to do so. Many wanted the slave trade stopped as developing into a full slave society would entail droves of imported Africans. The uneasy balance was slave=black and white=free, immigrants shunning the mixed to ensure full inclusion as whites, and slave status (therefore race) being determined through the mother in near conjuction with laws forbidding interracial marriages and legal unions. Reality was also more nuanced.