Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement

Jamestown

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On May 6, 1607, three ships carrying almost one hundred men reached the Chesapeake Bay. They chose a highly defensible site along the James River in what is now Virginia, and began constructing a fort, thatched huts, a storehouse, and a church. They named the settlement Jamestown. The men set to planting, but most were either townsmen who did not know how to farm or were gentlemen adventures who felt manual labor was beneath them. They had come to find gold, not to form a settlement.

First Encounters

John Smith

John Smith

At first, the weather was good and the natives friendly. Then came the blistering heat of summer and swarms of insects bred in the nearby wetlands. The men became sick, quickly ran low on food, and faced hostilities from nearby natives. Supplies from England were unreliable, and without the leadership of John Smith, the men would have likely not survived. Smith was a soldier of fortune and made a name for himself because of his military expertise. He took firm control of the settlement, declaring all men must work to eat. About 80 of the original 100 men survived on a diet of local small game and fish. In 1609, a ship arrived from English with 400 additional colonists. The new arrivals overwhelmed the beleaguered colony, and any hope that Smith might be able to maintain Jamestown faded when, suffering from a gunpowder burn, he sailed back to England.

The “Starving Time”

Did you know...

Pocahontas

Pocahontas

Unlike in the Disney version of the story, Pocahontas did not marry John Smith.  She married John Rolfe, helped establish peace between her tribe (the Powhatan) and the English, visited England, and died there in 1617.

Sketch of Jamestown Fort 1608

Sketch of Jamestown Fort 1608

What followed Smith’s departure is known as the “starving time.” The winter of 1609-1610 was the worst the colonists had seen. Their fields lay fallow. Before long they began to tear apart their houses, burning the wood as fuel. Weakened by hunger and disease, the Jamestown settlers proved easy targets for nearby hostile natives. The colonists were trapped within their own fort. During that winter, they ate their way through their livestock and then ate their pets, mice, and rats. Eventually, they resorted to cannibalism. Only sixty people were still alive (480 had been alive the previous summer) when a ship arrived in May 1610 with supplies and additional colonists. The ship brought only more mouths to feed, and the survivors resolved to abandon the colony. Not more than ten miles down the river, the contingent met three additional English ships loaded with supplies and 150 more men.

Jamestown had been given a reprieve, but for what? The colonists had not found wealth or even a new route to the Orient. They had not been able to produce anything of value for the mother country, England. They had known only hardship and starvation. Still the colony struggled on until 1612 when one of the new colonists, John Rolfe, began growing a local native crop: tobacco.

Cash Crop: Tobacco

After arriving in Virginia, John Rolfe began cultivating a variety of tobacco that Europeans found appealing due to its mild flavor. Tobacco had become the cultural rage in England, and anyone who could afford it smoked or sniffed the dried leaves of the plant, and demand for the variety grown in Virginia was especially high. Tobacco became the cultural rage in England. By 1619 the Jamestown colonists had exported ten tons of tobacco to England, and the Europeans demanded more. The little colony was prospering and nearly everyone in Virginia grew the cash crop. As one individual noted, "streets and all other spare places [are] planted with tobacco...". The prosperity signaled the permanence of the English in the New World. At last stockholders and the monarchy found it profitable to invest in the colonies.

Tobacco was profitable because the English government forbade the colonists from selling their tobacco anywhere except London, where each shipment was charged with a heavy excise tax. By taxing each shipment, England shared in the profits. Still, tobacco garnered enough profits so the colonists prospered, too, so much so that they were able to invest in some of life’s “luxuries.” In 1619 a private English company brought in ninety women, who were sold to men for marriage at a price of 120 pounds of tobacco each. That same year the colonists exchanged foodstuffs for twenty black Africans from Dutch traders. These Africans were legally indentured servants, not slaves, but they were the first Africans in North America.