Jamestown

Creation of the Jamestown colony (1607–10)

In 1606, King James I granted the Virginia Company, a joint-stock company, a charter to establish a settlement in North America to mine and search for gold, silver, and copper. It also required the company to pay one-fifth of its profits to the King. The company initially attempted to settle a colony in Maine, but when that failed the company focused on more southern locations for a settlement.

In May 1607, 104 men and boys established the Jamestown settlement on a peninsula on the banks of the James River, named after King James I. However, the settlers were very ill-equipped for survival. Few had the farming experience to feed 104 people. Conflict soon arose between the colonists over food rations and labor. Diseases such as influenza also posed a threat. By January 1608, only 38 of the original colonists were still alive.

Fig. 2 - Jamestown Exposition illustration

Many of the first settlers were gentlemen unaccustomed to working with their hands and artisans with skills such as glassmaking, which had no value in establishing a mining colony. Having come to Virginia expecting to make easy fortunes, most could not adjust to the conditions they encountered.

They resisted adopting the techniques of the Indigenous Peoples, with many retaining proper English dress and sedentary work habits. Combined with chronic malnutrition and disease, these attitudes took a terrible toll. During the 'starving time' in the winter of 1609 to 1610, some colonists even resorted to cannibalism. Only around 60 of around 500 colonists survived this period.

From the beginning of the settlement until Virginia’s conversion to a royal colony in 1624, close to 8000 immigrants arrived but fewer than 1300 survived.

Jamestown colony map

The colony of Jamestown was founded in what is now the state of Virginia on a swampy island in the James River, approximately 150 miles north of the failed Roanoke settlement.

Fig. 3 - Jamestown Zuniga Map

The Powhatan Confederacy

The Virginia Company settled in a region dominated by the Powhatan Confederacy –a group of Algonquian-speaking Indigenous tribes. Wahunsenacawh, known by the English as Powhatan, had inherited the chiefdom of six allied tribes on the coast of what is now Virginia. By the time the English arrived in 1607, he was consolidating his control over around 25 other tribes in the area.

Initially, Wahucsenacawh did not view the English as a threat, even considering them potential allies against enemy tribes. John Smith usually represented the English in meetings with Wahucsenacawh and although the pair’s relationship was never friendly, both the English and the Indigenous inhabitants of the area gained something from each other.

Fig. 5 - Crowning of Powhatan

The people of the Powhatan Confederacy found the settlers as a source of desirable goods such as metal tools and weapons. In exchange, they traded their excess corn to the starving colonists, without which the colonists would not have survived, even with John Smith’s efforts. Englishmen often wandered into Indigenous villages and vice versa; there were some initial clashes, but the two groups were focused more on trade and maintaining peaceful relations.

One of the most frequent visitors to Jamestown was one of the daughters of Powhatan, Pocahontas. Though she never saved John Smith from execution at her father’s hands -as Smith had sometimes claimed- she did on occasion warn the colonists of plots that may affect them. Pocahontas continued to visit the colony after John Smith’s departure and built other relationships. However, the early, relatively peaceful interactions between the Powhatans and the Jamestown settlement would not last.

The First Anglo-Powhatan War (1609–14)

After John Smith left the colony in 1609, the settlement continued to struggle to maintain its population and make a profit. More settlers arrived, but many still would not survive due to disease and malnutrition. In the fall of 1609, conflicts broke out along the James River between the settlers and the Powhatan tribes as the settlers pressured the tribes for assistance.

Powhatan retaliated by forcing the settlers back into the Fort of Jamestown during the winter of 1609. When reinforcements arrived from England in the spring, the settlers responded with a violent attack, burning down villages and attacking civilians. Skirmishes continued between the English and the tribes for nearly two years.

In 1613, the Englishmen seized Pocahontas as a hostage to use as leverage to negotiate a truce with Powhatan. She arranged to marry John Rolfe, a widowed planter, by the following year. Powhatan approved of the match, agreeing to a formal treaty with the colonists. Pocahontas’s marriage linked Powhatan to the English, with the treaty cementing their alliance, strengthening his position with the thirty tribes he had under his rule.

The peace established in 1614 lasted eight years, persisting beyond Powhatan’s and Pocahontas’s deaths. But even before 1614, the force that would end the peace had already taken root. That force was the spread of tobacco cultivation.

Jamestown: the introduction of tobacco

The settlers and the Virginia Company found in tobacco a product they could sell back in Europe. The tobacco native to North America was harsh and unpleasant to the English palette, but the climate was well suited for its cultivation. Because of this, John Rolfe imported seeds of preferable tobacco varieties from South America and began producing tobacco in 1612.

The following year, he shipped samples home to England. This venture soon became successful as 20,000 pounds of tobacco were sent to England in 1617 and 40,000 pounds in 1618. This number continued to increase throughout the 1620s, and tobacco became the foundation of the settlement’s success.

Successful tobacco cultivation required an enormous amount of land since the crop quickly depleted the soil of nutrients. Planters soon learned that a field could produce only about three good crops before it had to rest for several years to regain the appropriate amount of nutrients. What did this mean for Jamestown?

Fig. 6 - Cultivation of Tobacco at Jamestown

Well, it began to expand rapidly. Eager planters started to apply for large land grants on both sides of the James River. Due to the sense of security from the years of peace, farmers established farms at some distance from one another along the river banks, a settlement pattern that worked well for tobacco cultivation but not for defense against attacks.

The Second Anglo-Powhatan War (1622–32)

Opechancanough, Powhatan’s brother and successor watched the English colonists steadily closing in on tribal lands and attempting to convert members of the tribes to Christianity. He began to recognize the danger the English presented to the Confederacy.

On March 22, 1622, the Powhatans launched a coordinated attack along the James River. By the end of the day, about one-third of the English population was dead.

Fig. 7 Jamestown Massacre

The colony reeled from the attack, but it did not collapse. Reinforced by new shipments of men and weapons, the colonists struck back. Over the next few years, they repeatedly attacked Opechancanough’s villages.

The Royal Colony of Virginia

The 1622 attack that failed to destroy Jamestown succeeded in ending the Virginia Joint Stock Company, which had never made any profits from its venture. In 1624, King James I revoked the company’s charter and made Virginia a royal colony, ruled by the King through appointed officials.

Legacies of the Jamestown settlement

What were the legacies of Jamestown on the new royal colony and on the future of America?

1. George Percy, 'Observations gathered out of a Discourse of the Plantation of the Southerne Colonie in Virginia', Hakluytus Posthumus, or Purchas His Pilgrimes, compiled by Samuel Purchas (London: H. Fetherston, 1625) 4:1689-1690.