Historic Jamestowne
First Successful English Colony
On the shores of tidewater
Virginia, on May 13, 1607, three wooden sailing ships from England landed. The Susan Constant, the Godspeed, and the Discovery
left London on December 20th, 1606 and after stops at the Canary and
Caribbean Islands, arrived in North America. The three ships searched the James
River and after several weeks, selected an isolated upriver island. As the
ships tied up to the trees on Jamestown Island, 104 men and boys disembarked to
establish the first permanent English settlement in North America.
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| Replicas in 2/3 scale of the ships at Jamestown Settlement (Photo by Hunner) |
The English had failed previous attempts
to establish colonies. In the late 1580s, they tried several times at Roanoke. While
there, they named the land Virginia, after Queen Elizabeth I. Her successor,
James I, granted a charter to the Virginia Company to settle the east coast. As
a private business, the Virginia Company had to turn a profit and created two
branches—the Virginia Companies of London and of Plymouth. The London branch founded
the Jamestown colony while Plymouth held the land north of Virginia.
The English in 1607 faced a
daunting challenge. They had to establish a viable community at great distance
from England, amidst Algonquins who resisted the settlement, and at an
unhealthy place. The nearby swamps bred mosquitoes and disease, and the brackish
water sickened the colonists. Within six months of the first landing, fifty
percent of the colonists had died, mainly from disease or accidental causes,
but also from conflict with the Powhatan.
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| Swamp at Jamestown Island (Photo by Hunner) |
Contested leadership plagued Jamestown from its beginning. Capt. John Smith, an adventurer, mercenary soldier,
and an escapee from a Turkish prison, so angered his shipmates on the voyage
that they put him in irons. The instructions from the Virginia Company opened
at landing however named Smith as one of the leaders. The settlers first built
a triangular Fort James on the banks of the river. The log palisaded compound protected
the colonists and the English future in North America.
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| Model of Fort James within the compound (Photo by Hunner) |
The Starving Time
In 1608, the “Second Supply” from
England arrived on three ships which brought more than 100 men and boys, plus
two women, and much needed provisions. The colony struggled through the winter
and survived; however the resupply of the summer of 1609 went tragically awry.
Nine ships set sail from England but a hurricane hit them, and the ship with
the new leaders wintered in Bermuda. At Jamestown, the “Starving Time” gripped
the colony. Lack of food and goods, attacks by the Powhatan, and diseases all
felled the English. Cannibalism prowled through the community.
In April 2012, archaeologists found
and analyzed the remains of a fourteen year old girl (nicknamed Jane) who had
died during the Starving Time. They announced in May 2013 that Jane’s remains
showed evidence of cannibalism. Cut marks on bones and a hole in the skull
proved that after she died, her starving neighbors cannibalized her. At the
beginning of the winter of 1609-1610, around 400 people lived at the fort. By
the end of the next spring, only sixty had survived the Starving Time.
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| Jane's skull and reconstruction of her face (From http://www.sciencemag.org/) |
In the spring of 1610, the ones
alive abandoned Fort James and set sail for England; however, before they got
to the Atlantic Ocean, they met the long delayed supply ships. Imagine the emotions
of the Starving Time survivors as they were forced to return to the site of so
much suffering. Return they did.
Jamestown quickly resettled, but
the question of how to make a profit hung heavy over the Virginia Colony. For,
while the crown supported the settlement in principal, it gave no money for the
expensive colonization. Artifacts excavated from an early well illustrate their
attempts at brewing, silk production, brick making, blacksmithing, collecting
medicinal plants, and glassblowing. For example, in 1608, German and Polish
glassblowers arrived to use the large amounts of wood and sand to make glass
for export to London. Their early experiments to turn a profit failed.
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| Re-enactment of glassblowing at Jamestown (Photo by Hunner) |
Tobacco Saves the Colony
Here entered John Rolfe and tobacco.
He sailed in on the Third Supply, having spent the winter shipwrecked on the
Bermuda Islands where his wife and daughter died. While on Bermuda, he
purchased tobacco seeds. The taste for tobacco had swept Europe, and Spain imported the golden leaf from its colonies and so filled its own treasury. The Powhatan grew
a harsh tobacco, not acceptable for export to the Europe. In 1611, Rolfe
cultivated the sweeter tobacco of the Caribbean and sent four hogshead barrels of it to England. The tobacco shipment quickly sold out, and Virginia
found a profitable export crop. This addictive substance turned the tide for Jamestown
and secured its permanence.
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| Tobacco Field at Jamestown Settlement (Photo by Hunner) |
Pocahontas
Pocahontas also helped make
Jamestown permanent. As daughter of Wahunsenaca, the mamanatowick (paramount chief)
of the Powhatan Chiefdom, she met the English soon after they arrived. In the
winter of 1607-08, the Powhatans captured Capt. John Smith and brought him to the
capital of the Powhatan Chiefdom. Perhaps Pocahontas (who was eleven or twelve
at the time and the chief’s favorite daughter) saved Smith’s life by placing
her head over his as it was about to be smashed. Whether the Powhatans truly
sought to kill Smith or whether this was an elaborate ceremony of acceptance,
Smith became an adopted son of Wahunsenaca.
Pocahontas resurfaced several years
later with the other John in this story, John Rolfe. Relations between the
English and the Americans worsened and hostage taking and combat spread. Capt.
Argull kidnapped Pocahontas to force the Powhatan to release several captives
and return stolen weapons. While a prisoner, she converted to Christianity,
took the name “Rebecca,” and met John Rolfe. They married in April 1614 and the
“Pocahontas’ Peace” halted the fighting between the Powhatan and the English
for a decade. This peaceful period allowed the colonists to consolidate and spread
to new areas of the coastal region.
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| Statue of Pocahantas at Jamestown (Photo by Hunner) |
The power couple had a son, Thomas,
and the Virginia Company decided to bring the Rolfe family to England to
publicize the struggling colony. They arrived in 1616 with about a dozen
Powhatan men and women. The English treated Lady Rebecca Rolfe like the royalty
that this Powhatan noble was. In England, they toured the country and attended the
theater where they sat near King James I and Queen Anne. Right before they returned
to Virginia, Rebecca died. Thomas stayed in England and grew up with Uncle Henry
Rolfe, while John and the Powhatan returned to Jamestown. Rolfe married again,
but died on his plantation in 1622, possibly during the hostilities that broke out
after the Pocahontas Peace collapsed. Warfare erupted off and on for years.
The Powhatan revolted again in 1644
when 350 to 400 of the then 8,000 colonists died. However, the English captured
and killed the Chief which ended the Powhatan Chiefdom. These Native Americans then
became subjects of the English crown. They continued to live in the East Coast
with their descendants who are still there, but after the mid-1600s, their
civilization waned under pressure from English weapons, from their draft
animals, from their diseases, and from their growing population.
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| Map of the Powhatan Chiefdom (Photo by Hunner of exhibit at Historic Jamestowne) |
The Oldest Representative Assembly in the United States
During the Pocahontas Peace, the
Virginians created self-government. At the end of July in 1619, a General
Assembly met at the Jamestown church. Representatives from all eleven regions
of the colony debated how to create a governing body. Although hampered by a
heat wave, Governor Yeardley on July 30th, 1619 called for the
creation of the House of Burgesses. It has met continuously since, is known now
as the Virginia General Assembly, and is the oldest representative
legislative assembly in the Western Hemisphere.
That year, two other developments added
to the peoples of the colony. The first Africans arrived at Jamestown to work
in the labor intensive tobacco fields. From this small start, African labor
grew in importance, especially after Bacon’s Rebellion. Also in 1619, ninety women arrived
to help make the colony more permanent.
Like the Spanish colony in New
Mexico, colonists held their Christianity faith closely. Reverend Bucke
conducted the first Episcopalian service under a billowing sailcloth in May
1607. The Church of England, not as demanding nor evangelical as Catholicism,
set the tone for the colony.
Mortality continued to lurk among
the colonists, and church records document high infant mortality. Profits from
tobacco with indentured and slave labor doing the field work and a carpe diem attitude
from seeing so many family and friends die combined to give Virginia a fast paced,
risk embracing society. By mid-17th
century, Jamestown thrived.
Nonetheless, problems simmered. Tobacco
experienced declining prices due to competition from Maryland and the
Carolinas. Hailstorms, floods, drought, and hurricanes damaged crops. The
indentured servant system (where men and women agreed to work for seven years
in exchange for trans-Atlantic passage and then room and board) also contributed to
the problems. Once they completed their indenture, the freemen often had to
settle on the fringes of the colony.
Bacon's Rebellion
The spark that ignited Bacon’s
Rebellion in 1675 started with an attack by the Doeg Indians against the
Mathews’ plantation in the northern Virginia. Mathews had not paid the Doeg for
some trade goods. In retaliation, Nathaniel Bacon, a recent arrival, organized
almost 1,000 settlers to subdue the Native Americans. This unleashed an
indiscriminate hunt for any Indians, including those loyal to the English. The
frontier war then turned into a civil war as Governor Berkeley declared Bacon a
rebel and attacked his headquarters. Bacon and his rebels descended on
Jamestown and from July through September, 1676, controlled the capital. In
early September, the Governor’s forces retook the capital, but not before Bacon
and his men set fire to the statehouse, the church, and other buildings. As the
colony reeled in turmoil, Bacon died, possibly of cholera, the rebellion
fizzled out, and twenty-three rebels were captured and hung.
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| The Burning of Jamestown by Bacon and his rebels (Courtesy of NPS) |
Since the indentured servant system
fueled the rebellion, growers looked for new labor sources. Plantation owners now
turned to African slaves as an alternative to indentured servants, both in reducing
costs as well as in control of the workers. We will explore the issue of slavery in
the colonies more in our next chapter on the African Burial Grounds in
downtown New York City.
By the end of the 17th
century, the capital of Virginia moved to the Middle Plantation, soon renamed
Williamsburg. As the Europeans spread out over the coastal plains and into the
Blue Ridge Mountains and as healthier places to live attracted settlers, Jamestown
faded away; however, the first successful English colony established that nation's dominance on the East Coast.
The Association for the Preservation
of Virginia Antiquities (APVA), founded in 1889, received the Jamestown church
ruins and the twenty-two surrounding acres in 1893 from Mr. and Mrs. Barney, the
owners of Jamestown Island. In 1934, the
National Park Service acquired the remaining 1,500 acres of the island. Ever
since, Historic Jamestowne has been jointly managed by the APVA and the NPS as
the Colonial National Historical Park in conjunction with the Yorktown
Battlefield. In 2009, the APVA changed its name to Preservation Virginia. As a
joint venture by the NPS and Preservation Virginia, Historic Jamestowne evokes
the origins of our country, its colonial beginnings with democratic leanings,
its dependence on indentured and then slave labor, and its complicated
relationship with the indigenous peoples of the continent. We will return to the Colonial National Historical Park in the chapter on Yorktown, the defeat of the English army there, and the end of the British experience in the colonies.
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| Excavation in 2013 near the re-built Episcopal church (Photo by Hunner) |
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| Entrance to Fort James on the banks of the James River (Photo by Hunner) |
Colonial National Historical Park
P.O. Box 210
Yorktown, VA 23690
757.856.1200
