Virginia

Where was Jamestown?

John Smith High Res map

Native Population

There were an estimated 14,000 Indigneous people in the region who were politically known as Tsenacommacah and who spoke an Algonquian language. They were the Powhatan Confederacy, ruled by their paramount chief known as Wahunsenacawh or "Chief Powhatan".

Powhattan by John Smith
John White @ the British Museum

Colonists Arrive...

] It was established by the Virginia Company of London as "James Fort" on May 4, 1607  and was considered permanent after a brief abandonment in 1610.

Susan Constant ship

And a Fort is Built

THINGS DID NOT GO WELL..

.Despite the hospitality of Wahunsenacawh, the presence of the English settlers and perhaps a further expedition up the James River by Captain Christopher Newport provoked the Paspahegh, Weyanock, and other groups to mount a series of attacks on the fort during a period of violence lasting from May 27 to July 14, 1607. 

Smith Takes Command

"No work no food"

Starving Time

In the "Starving Time" of 1609–1610, the Jamestown settlers faced rampant starvation for want of additional provisions. During this time, lack of food drove people to eat snakes and even boil the leather from shoes for sustenance. Only 60 of the original 214 settlers at Jamestown survived. There is scientific evidence that the settlers at Jamestown had turned to cannibalism during the starving time
2/3rds die "starving time"

WAR AND PEACE

Relief Ship arrives but...Relations between the colonists and the Powhatans quickly deteriorated after De La Warr's arrival, eventually leading to conflict. The Anglo-Powhatan War lasted until Samuel Argall captured Wahunsenacawh's daughter Matoaka, better known by her nickname Pocahontas, after which the chief accepted a treaty of peace.

Among the colonists who survived the Third Supply was John Rolfe, who carried with him a cache of untested new tobacco seeds from Bermuda, which had grown wild there after being planted by shipwrecked Spaniards years before.In 1614, Rolfe began to successfully harvest tobacco. Prosperous and wealthy, he married Pocahontas, daughter of Chief Powhatan, bringing several years of peace between the English and natives.

Tobacco farming grows

As the English continued to appropriate more land for tobacco farming, relations with the natives worsened.

THE START OF SLAVERY

Of the first documented African slaves to arrive in English North America, on the frigate White Lion in 1619, were an African man and woman, later named Antoney and Isabella. Their baby, named William Tucker, would become the first documented African child baptized in British North America. Listed in the 1624 census in Virginia, they became the first African family recorded in Jamestown.

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HOUSE OF BURGESSES

In 1619, the first representative assembly in America, the General Assembly, convened in the Jamestown Church, "to establish one equal and uniform government over all Virginia" which would provide "just laws for the happy guiding and governing of the people there inhabiting," Initially, only men of English origin were permitted to vote.

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THE MASSACRE OF 1622

After several years of strained coexistence, Chief Opchanacanough and his Powhatan Confederacy attempted to eliminate the English colony once and for all. On the morning of March 22, 1622, they attacked outlying plantations and communities up and down the James River in what became known as the Indian Massacre of 1622. More than 300 settlers were killed in the attack, about a third of the colony's English-speaking population. . Jamestown was spared only through a timely warning by a Virginia Indian employee. There was not enough time to spread the word to the outposts. Of the 6,000 people who came to the settlement between 1608 and 1624, only 3,400 survived

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MOVING ON...

In 1624, King James revoked the Virginia Company's charter, and Virginia became a royal colony. Despite the setbacks, the colony continued to grow. Ten years later, in 1634, by order of King Charles I, the colony was divided into the original eight shires of Virginia (or counties), in a fashion similar to that practiced in England. Jamestown was now located in James City Shire, soon renamed the "County of James City", better known in modern times as James City County, Virginia, the nation's oldest county.