Jamestown

Author's Note: For my next conference I chose to write this piece on the founding of the Jamestown colony. I am analyzing why the colonists had such a hard time founding the colony.

Four hundred years ago, Jamestown settlers spent months on end travelling to an unknown world thousands of miles away, and for many different reasons. Most wanted religious freedom, but some wanted to just be the first to the new continent. At the beginning of the 17th century, all hopes were riding on them to establish a new place to live and prosper. Even as they got there, they were struggling. Struggling for food, struggling for shelter, and struggling against disease. In just four short years, eighty percent of the 500 colonists that traveled over in hopes of a fresh start were dead. Dead because they weren't prepared for the unknown diseases, the lack of food and water, too many unskilled workers, and the Indians roaming the land nearby.

Disease was a big factor in the deaths of the colonists.104 colonists came over in the spring of 1607, and within six months, about fifty of them had died from disease. By the end of 1607, there "were but fortie in all." (Doc E) The colonists had also picked a perfect spot to transmit disease. It was in a swamp land where mosquitoes carrying malaria could bite a colonists, and the colonist could transfer it to each other easily because of the unhealthy, unclean environment.

 

Another major problem was water, contributing to death in several ways. Because their water sources were so close to the Atlantic Ocean, their river water was very brackish and therefore too salty to drink. When the Europeans drank the water, they fell ill. Second, the water was dirty because the colonists put the human waste right back into the river. When the tides came in, the waste festered there, and was slowly washed inland. When the colonists dumped their garbage closer to the Atlantic Ocean down the river, it just floated back to the settlement. Because the settlers got their water from the James River, they were basically bathing and drinking in human waste. (Doc A) A third water difficulty (or lack thereof) was drought. Without much water, the settler's food crop like corn, wheat, and oats, would die. Historians found old cypress tree-ring evidence that said settlers in the Jamestown area received well below average rainfall from 1607 and 1611. (Doc B)

Compounding on the problem of disease was that the Europeans didn't bring enough skilled workers to America. On the first and second Jamestown ship lists, they showed that from a total of 230 colonists, more than seventy were gentlemen, wealthy people not used to working with their hands. They also said that only about 30 were laborers, one surgeon to protect from the plentiful disease, and absolutely zero were farmers. Because so many people that were first brought over couldn't help produce food or build shelters to keep the other settlers alive.

Disease, bad water, and untrained workers altogether brought death down upon the backs of the settlers. The Europeans only started to learn from their mistakes after the summer of 1610, when the reason for death turned from mainly disease and water to Indian attacks. The colonists brought more provisions over from Europe, they expanded into other places with more sanitary water, and they also realized that they wouldn't establish a solid set of colonies with half their people as gentleman. Once they did this, they started to prosper and establish a new country - the United States of America.

Jamestown DBQ packet from Sam S