Jamestown

Jamestown’s has a rich history that can’t be told in a short time but could go for days and barely scrape the surface. Starting with the foundation of the town when 104 English men and boys aboard, the Susan Constant, the Godspeed, and the Discovery founded Jamestown on 13 May 1607. Replicas of these ships can be found and boarded for tour purposes around the Jamestown settlement to this day. The English settlement was named after King James I of England. The land met the criteria set forth by the king, in which water was lined on three sides. This water was deep enough for the ship to dock at the shoreline and was inland from the open ocean. India has very little or no population. The Virginia company chose Edward Maria Winfield naming him as the first President of this newly founded Virginia Colony. The English men wasted no time in preparing a fort which was completed on 15 June. The fort was in a triangular shape hosting four or five artillery pieces. The settlers would come to find out that they were on Powhatan Indians hunting ground whom they developed a mixed relationship with. Captain Newport, a council member, departed a week later to England to gather supplies for the settlement. The settlers wasted no time getting various diseases due to unclean drinking water and unsanitary living conditions.

The death toll of the settlement was high with fever, war, famine, and many other things due to unfavorable living conditions. One of the few reasons this fort did not fully die out was due to the Powhatan Chief helping these settlers with food and showing them how to live in this new area the English were unfamiliar with. It would be two years, and the English were solely reliant on the Powhatan Indians for food. This year there was a major drought, and the Indians could not be as generous with their winter food stores as in the past. This was known as the starving time, and the English knew that if they were to leave the fort to try and gather food, they would more than likely be killed by the Powhatan Indians. The settlers resorted to eating whatever they could to try and survive. Leather from their shoes or belts, any animal they could find and even settlers who had died during the winter. At the start of 1610 where 80 to 90 percent of the settlers died due to disease or starvation.

In May 1610, more settlers which were stranded in Bermuda after their shipwreck arrived in Jamestown. These shipwrecked survivors assembled two boats and sailed to Jamestown only to find the fort town down, dangerously low food stores and the gates off their hinges. Sir Thomas Gates the new sitting governor, along with the men that accompanied him, and the few remaining survivors decided to leave this settlement. They would make it a day until they received news that an English fleet was coming to Jamestown along with the new governor for life Lord Delaware. They would go on to rebuild Jamestown and become tobacco growers. John Rolfe would introduce a new strain of tobacco, turning the settlement into a profitable tobacco venture for the Virginia Company. The next appointed Governor, Yeardley, convened the first Representative Legislative Assembly on July 30, 1619. This was the start of the first representative government that is currently in place in the United States. During this same year, the first documented Africans were captured and forced to work the tobacco fields these people were documented as slaves and indentured servants. However, the historical evidence shows that by the manor they were treated they would be classified today as slaves. During this time, the Virginia Company shipped women over to the settlement to start families. About a hundred women have established or started families in the settlement. 

Long awaited, peace between the English and the Powhatan started with the conversion and marriage of Pocahontas to John Rolfe in 1614. Pocahontas was kidnapped by the English a year prior to their union. But this peace did not last long, for eight years later Chief Opechancano planned an attack on the British settlement. He was tired of the English’s presence and encroachment on Pocahontas’s land. Jamestown narrowly avoided the attack after they received a warning from a Powhatan boy living with them. 350-400 of the 1,200 settlers were killed during the attack. After the attack, the Powhatan withdrew as a way for to tell the English learn from your mistakes or leave. The English did not learn their lessons and retaliated leaving these two groups to fight amongst each other for the next ten years until a weak peace arrangement was reached between the two groups in 1632.

“A Short History of Jamestown,” National Parks Service, n.d., accessed February 28, 2025, https://www.nps.gov/jame/learn/historyculture/a-short-history-of-jamestown.htm.