The early people of Jamestown have not fared well throughout history. I can see from the historical fiction book Blood on the River and Chief Powhatan's speech to Captain John Smith that the commoners endured due to a number of social and environmental problems. However, in my opinion, social problems were primarily responsible for more damage. I think it's because the colonists didn't cooperate well and showed no respect for the commoners.
Well many colonists died because of their water supply, their relationship with the natives, and because of their knowledge of survival. These factor lead to early death for most of the colonist. The water supply for Jamestown was brackish, or filthy, and lead to disease.
He shows this through the section of the passage stating: “...within six months after Captain Smith’s departure there remained not past sixty men, women, and children, most miserable and poor creatures.” 2. The settlers of the Jamestown Colony didn’t have a lot going for them during the time period well known as the “Starving Time”;
There was a drought that lasted 1605-1614 which was the longest period Jamestown suffered (Document B). The lack of rain really affected the colonist because their crops didn't grow which meant that they could no longer trade with the Powhatan indians and because they had no food to feed themselves. Some colonist even considered cannibalism because they were so hungry. Also the drought left no water for the colonist to drink, so some died of dehydration. One winter of 1609-16010 (Document B) affected and killed many of the colonist, this happened because it left the colonist starving, it was too cold to do anything, and because it froze the crops and killed them too.
First of all, they were not given enough food. In the text, “Night” it states, “In the mornings: black coffee. At midday: soup. By the third day I was eagerly eating any kind of soup.” In comparison to that, “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass” says, “The men and women slaves received their monthly allowance of food, eight pounds of pork, or its equivalent in fish, and one bushel of corn meal.”
Only sixty of the colonist had survived the harsh winter that will forever be known as the starving times. Sir Thomas Gates and Sir George Summers arrived in May 1610 with 150 people and some supplies from the Bermudas only to find the walking anomalies of Jamestown. Sir Thomas Gates took over as the new governor and order the immediate abandonment of Jamestown. They labored into June to build 4 ships to carry them all back to England. Once all were boarded and sailing down the James river, they spotted another ship headed their way.
The water was unclean, droughts and prairie fires ruined their crops, and
Tobacco was the basis of economic life and a motivation for settling down in Jamestown. This helped result in an increase of settlers. The English expansion sparked war in 1622 led by Opechancanough. This war resulted in a tragic death of about a third of the nation. Particularly, the English inhabitants seized Indian’s land and food, cornering the Indian citizens towards limiting possibilities; needless to say they ended up dispersing.
They had very bad water in Jamestown their water was very murky the water did not get flushed it fested in the water that they swam and drank in. A lot of the Colonists died from that because it was not healthy for them because the water also had human waste in it. There were many other reason why so many Colonists died in Jamestown another reason why Colonists died was because they barely
Times were much simpler, yet worse, in March 1610 as there were only about sixty of us colonial men left standing and we were lucky to even still be alive due to the high mortality rate. Fast forward forty years later, and now families have been shipping in by the thousands, although some do not last long due to lingering diseases. I have made an assumption that the water we have been drinking may be a cause of all the disease that is continuously being spread amongst the people, but people seem to be more focused on tobacco and the natives. However, priorities were not always based on tobacco, because before John Rolfe blessed the colony with his discoveries there was the issue of maintaining a stable society on this
At least a half-dozen accounts, by people who lived through the period or spoke to colonists who did, describe occasional acts of cannibalism that winter. They include reports of corpses being exhumed and eaten, a husband killing his wife and salting her flesh (for which he was executed), and the mysterious disappearance of foraging colonists. The Starving Time at Jamestown in the Colony of Virginia was a period of starvation during the winter of 1609–1610 in which all but 60 of 214 colonists died. The colonists, the first group of whom had originally arrived at Jamestown on May 14, 1607, had never planned to grow all of their own food.
But the majority of the young white males who came to Jamestown were poor, uneducated, and unskilled. They had no families and no means of supporting themselves, which meant that they caused a potential problem to the political and economic challenge for stability. Since these men had no skills, they would become indentured servants, trading their labor for free passage to the colonies. Elite landowners used this unfree labor to their advantage by growing cash crops like tobacco and exporting their agricultural products, eventuating establishing Jamestown as a boomtown. Once the colony had become stabilized, the first representative legislature general assembly met in the Jamestown church in 1619.
In “The Lost Colony and Jamestown Droughts” Jamestown suffered its longest time of an unbroken period of drought.(57) August through May 1610 “(the “Starving Time”) killed 110 colonists.(Fausz, 63) The colonist also died because during the winter time, the was not a lot of food to feed themselves. The other reason colonists died because fish were only present during spring and early summer which is why they had no food during winter time. That is the reason colonists died by starvation.
This is why I think a lack of fresh water was one of the reasons the English colonists did not
Some of the deaths of these colonists were caused by freezing to death, some of the deaths were caused by starvation because the animals that they ate where scarce and hibernating and some of the nuts and berries that they gathered were covered in snow. Also many colonists died because of diseases from europe and diseases from the lack of sanitation in the New World. One substantially important difference between Plymouth
