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Article 4 Contact 1607 to 1614 Final Article 4 The Contact Period – Arrival of first colonists thru the starving time The Powhatan Tribes had been inhabiting the shores of the James River for several centuries when the sun rose on May 13, 1607. On this day the lives of these Indians and many others changed forever. This is the day that 104 English colonists landed at Jamestown Island with the intent of creating a permanent settlement in the New World. This article will provide the reader with insights into the establishment of Jamestown and a brief window into the precarious nature of its existence for its first several years. There were four primary reasons that King James I of England chartered the Virginia Company to go forth and explore the New World. The Crown and the Company investors hoped to find the elusive all-water route to the Orient and all of its treasures; to convert the indigenous population of the New World to Christianity; to find gold for England’s treasury; and finally to export raw and manufactured goods for investor profit. None of these goals were ever really met as the Indians resisted proselytizing, manufacturing projects were clearly not lucrative, and there was no gold for the taking. The Virginia Company charter of 1606 granted the investors an area of 100 miles along the coastline and 100 miles inland. This area included what we now know as Governor’s Land at the mouth of the Chickahominy River. The charter was revised in 1609 giving the Virginia Company 200 miles of coastline north and south of the mouth of the James River and all the land east and west from sea to sea. It took the first adventurers four and one-half months to cross the Atlantic Ocean from England. When the ships Godspeed, Discovery, and Susan Constant with Captain Christopher Newport in command finally arrived at Jamestown Island, the colonists were anxious, hungry, and sickly. It had been a long voyage and they expected to find a land of plenty upon their arrival. For many, Virginia did look like a paradise. One colonist, George Percy, the highest socially ranked member of the expedition and a future governor, described the Jamestown area thusly: The soil was good and fruitful, with excellent good timber. There are also great store of vines in bigness of a man’s thigh, running up to the tops of the trees, in great abundance…many squirrels, conies, blackbirds with crimson wings and divers other fowls and birds of divers and sundry colors of crimson, watchet (blue), yellow, green murrey and of divers other hues naturally without an art using (Kelso 9).1 Why did Newport and his shipmates pick Jamestown Island as the site for settlement? It was almost happenstance. Surprisingly, the James River channel runs close enough to the shoreline 1 The number following the Author’s name indicates the page number in the reference) at Jamestown Island that the mariners could tie their boats up to the trees lining the shore and so it was chosen as the site (McCartney 32). Many were initially convinced they had arrived in paradise. Newport and several of his men went exploring within days of arrival and reported seeing magnificent stands of timber and brilliantly colored flowers, lush vegetation, fertile soil and an abundance of wildfowl, game and marine life. They spied beech, oak, cedar, cypress, walnut and sassafras trees along with strawberries, raspberries, mulberries and other unknown species of berries. They also encountered local Native Americans whose bodies were adorned with brightly colored furs and jewelry of bone, shell, and copper (McCartney 31). What was the reality of life in Jamestown in the year 1607? It was terrible. The early history is troubled and filled with suffering and death. Within weeks of the colonists’ arrival, Powhatan’s Paspahegh warriors attacked the colonists killing several; the weather was unlike England in that it was a semi-tropical environment with extreme heat; Jamestown lacked fresh water; and their food stores were quickly depleted by eating or spoilage. Additionally, there was a major drought that year that affected crop production and the colonists were mostly unused to hard work, had few or no survival skills, and were unusually prone to accidents. Nearly half of those who landed were considered gentlemen, scholars, artisans, and craftsmen. What the expedition lacked were laborers and farmers whose skills were desperately needed for the sustainment of the colony. It was fortunate that at least two senior members of the colony, Captain Newport and Captain John Smith, had some knowledge of the local Algonquian language which they could have obtained from reading a report written by an astute Englishman named Thomas Harriot who had a penchant for learning languages and who learned Algonquian from two Carolina Indians who had been brought back from Carolina in 1584. Harriot chronicled the individual Algonquian words for each plant and animal known to the Indians (Kupperman 79). This allowed some degree of communication early on between the Indians and the colonists. Those two men and several others had been across the sea previously and did have some inclination of the difficulties that lay ahead. Unfortunately for many of the others, they would perish in their ignorance within months of arriving. As far as is known, there were 38 of the original 104 colonists still alive when the first resupply ship arrived in January 1608 (Tate 97). One of the first tasks undertaken was to build a fortification for protection from local Indians and from expected Spanish incursions up the James River. This first primitive half-moon fort was fashioned from boughs and branches of trees and didn’t offer much protection. A more substantial fort that was palisaded was constructed within the next several weeks of the landing. This fort included several pieces of ordnance (cannon) from the ships. Details of this first real fort are scarce although it has been described as being triangular in shape with a bulwark at each corner where the ordnance was mounted. Upon the completion of the first fort, Captain Newport sailed back to England with two of the three ships. He left behind a group of men who were not all that happy with their lot and were anxious about their future. The Virginia Company had sent a sealed box along with the expedition that contained the names of men who it expected to rule the colony. The box was opened upon arrival and the list 2 named Edward Maria Wingfield, John Martin, George Kendall, Bartholomew Gosnold, John Ratcliffe, and John Smith as the ruling council. These men then elected Wingfield, the only original investor in the Virginia Company, as the first president. (Kelso 12) Interestingly, Wingfield was subsequently impeached in September of 1607 for hoarding food and Captain John Ratcliffe was elected to succeed him. The newly arrived colonists were facing daunting challenges that were nearly insurmountable. By June 25th, Percy had chronicled the deaths of 25 colonists writing that: Our men were destroyed with cruel diseases as swellings, fluxs, burning fevers, swellings, and by wars, and some departed suddenly, but for the most part they died of mere famine. (Kelso 18). Modern day experts suggest that these cruel diseases include dysentery (fluxs), typhoid fever (burning fevers), and salt intoxication (swellings) from drinking salty river water (Tate 99). Smith’s reports on the colony indicate that by the fall of 1607 emissaries from the Paspehegh were visiting Jamestown Fort seeking peace and accommodation. These emissaries included Powhatan’s daughter, Pocahontas, who made regular trips to the fort often to provide provisions to the starving colonists. Relations between the Indians and the colonists was complicated. Each side wanted something from the other. The Indians were interested in trade goods like copper or glass beads and the colonists were interested in corn. Both sides bartered on and off to satisfy their needs but at the same time both sides were suspicious of the other. Treachery was commonplace and retribution was swift and generally out of proportion to the slight. Colonists who ventured out of the fort alone were killed outright or sometimes captured and tortured to death and some even burned at the stake as was John Ratcliffe who was a member of Jamestown’s ruling council and former president. Percy’s report of Ratcliffe’s death indicates that he was captured alive, then: bound unto a tree naked with a fire before, and by women his flesh was scraped from his bones with mussel shells and, before his face, thrown in the fire, and so for want of circumspection miserable perished. (Thompson 167) Indians suffered the same fate when set upon by vengeful colonists. The English colonists generally conducted retaliatory attacks against Indian villages burning the village structures and their crops. These attacks prevented the Indians from massing large numbers of warriors due to lack of food. Finally, a supply ship and another 100 newly-minted colonists including the first two women arrived at the fort in January 1608. Unfortunately, something flammable, perhaps gunpowder, was put in the storehouse with the new supplies and caused a fire that not only destroyed most of the resupply but also burned most of the fort, including houses inside the fort, to the ground. This disaster coupled with a particularly harsh winter in 1608 wreaked havoc on the colony. Smith reported that 144 out of a total of 244 colonists had perished by October of 1608. The Virginia Company sent another resupply fleet to Jamestown in 1609 consisting of 9 ships filled with supplies and food and some 500 hundred new colonists. The fleet ran into storms on its way across the Atlantic and was forced to stop at Bermuda for repairs.
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