Why Colonists Died At Jamestown

The Jamestown colonists were on the verge of becoming a dead colony, but somehow they pushed through the many challenges brought to the table, and became a successful colony. The Europeans sailed to Jamestown in 1607 on James Island. During this time period, life in Jamestown was very difficult because they had so many obstacles to overcome. The reasons why so many colonists at Jamestown died are because of starvation, disease, and conflict with the Indians.

Colonists and Natives were too confident and they tried to survive in the deathful fighting's and attacks! In 1607 the first English colonists arrived on the James River. They were sent by the Virginia company to find riches like gold, copper, and metal. They brought 104 men with them and three ships: The Susan Constant, the Discovery, and the Godspeed. When they arrived on the James River they also founded Jamestown which was the first English settlement in 1607 although before the colonists even got to the New World the emperor Powhatan was in power. Although why did so many colonists died in early Jamestown between 1607 and 1611? The reason why so many colonists died in Jamestown between 1607 and 1611 was because of disease, attack of Natives, and drought. So in the next few paragraphs, I will prove using historical evidence that colonists died because of disease, drought, and attacks of natives.

In the early years of Jamestown there was lots of death. In 1607 the first permanent English colony had arrived at James river. By 1611 roughly 400 Jamestown colonists were wounded up dead. The reasoning for many colonists dieing is because of lack of skills, bad environment, then bad relationship with natives.

One of the reasons I think why the colonists died was that lack of rainfall. Doc B stated, “ “0” on the chart means average tree ring size and therefore average rainfall “ (Doc B line 4). This matters because most of jamestown's rainfall was below zero. I feel that this might have killed the colonists because they were technically in a drought and they didn’t have any water to drink.

The English settlement of Jamestown was established in May of 1607. From then on to 1610 almost 200 of the settlers had died. So many settlers died in such little time because of disease, Native American attacks, and starvation.

The Indians knew how to live off the land and were expert hunters and gatherers their main food they grew was corn and traded with the colonist by giving them corn and gathering up food for them. Back in England people who were wealthy had no clue how to survive on the plains and take care of a farm and plow fields and hunt for meat. Since they came from the city of England the Englishmen were people who did not know that kind of life. They were wealthy Englishmen; most of these men were lazy and didn’t know what manual labor was. In addition, there were Englishmen of trade who were carpenters, blacksmiths, shoemakers who settled down in Jamestown. It was known that one of the main reasons why the Englishmen settled in Jamestown in hope to find gold, rubies, pearls, and silver and to be able to sell it in England for a profit. Devastation struck instead, within a few months less than hundred died. These deaths were excruciating deaths, and the horror of deaths continued from 1607 to 1610. Some men would find themselves going out of their mind, while others had a blistering burning fever, and some men’s skin would just peel off like peeling off a boiled potato and sudden deaths rapidly appeared, some licked up the blood from their falling comrades as some swelled up so fast less than a hundred from five hundred survived. Many of the colonists were very weak and could not do hardly anything. Some figured the cause of the deaths was from

Many early settlers died because of Native conflicts. When Francis West sailed up the Chesapeake Bay to trade with the Patawomeke Indians, who were unwilling trade with Francis West and his men, Francis west killed 2 of the Patawomeke, the English took the corn and kept the grain that Francis West was going to use to trade back down the Chesapeake Bay (Doc D). This caused Native conflicts because when the Patawomeke found out, the Patawomeke would want to get revenge and did killing around 100 or so colonists. Out of the original settlers who went to Jamestown, not a single settler was a gunsmith and on the 1st resupply England only sent 1 gunsmith (Doc C). Without a gunsmith the colonists were unable to make guns, making it harder to defend Jamestown, and even when

It was a hard time for the English when they arrived in the Americas. English settlers had sailed into the James River in Chesapeake bay region in Virginia during the spring of 1607. Why did so many colonists die between 1607 to 1611 in Jamestown? Three of the main reasons were, bad water, bad relations with Native Americans, and lacking major key settler skills.

In Jamestown why did so many colonists die? I believe that so many colonists died from certain areas that happened in Jamestown such as the salt water intrusion, the ships that carried disease back into the town, the Indians that would go on and of with trading to fighting, and the Jamestown drought. All of these events that occurred in Jamestown were in the time frame of 1607-1610 with 500 colonists that went to Jamestown only 20% came out of Jamestown but changed.

The First reason Jamestown colonists died was disease.Many of the colonists Die Because They did not have a sewer System and they did not know that the ocean water was going to the spring water which the water had human waste and they drank the water which got them sick.

First, settlers died due to lack of water. During the time the settlers came in 1607, there was a drought in Jamestown. When the tide came, the water level would rise and cause the water to become brackish. This is one reason why the water was not reliable for drinking. Second, the water was contaminated because of human feces. Because of the drought, feces in the water would fester rather than flush away. Usually, if the river was flowing, the feces would be flushed away. However, the river wasn’t flowing because the drought stopped water on the mountains. As you can see, these two reasons caused the Jamestown colony to get

In the Jamestown colony, colonists were dying because of Native American attacks, famine, disease, and their own mistakes. The colonists chose an area along a river that led to diseases such as dysentary and malaria. Settlers wasted valuable time that could have been used to hunt and fish. Food supplies dwindled until the entire colony was on the brink of starvation.

He who does not work shall not eat,”-Captain John Smith, . The main reason why the colonists of Jamestown died was the lack of people willing to work. Due to the lack of workers, most of the colony’s people died because they were unprepared when winter came around the corner. Many gentlemen came on the first ship in 1607, approximately 50, the gentlemen were wealthy men, (Document C). They were the ones that either did not want to help, and/or were inexperienced, as stated in Document C. So the people that did work and knew what they were doing had to carry the gentlemen’s weight and their own. Another portion of people that came over on the first boat were jewelers and gold prospectors, or goldsmiths, (Document C). They did not find

Imagine being a settler in an unknown land. No food, a lack of water, and disease spreading like wildfire. Fear of death was great. When English settlers began arriving on the James River in the Chesapeake Bay region of Virginia in the Spring of 1607, no one had a clue of the terrible future that awaited for most of them. The background of early Jamestown leads me to ask the question, why was mortality rate so high in early Jamestown between the years of 1607 and 1611? The conclusion for this is quite simple and can be answered in three parts, the mortality rate in early Jamestown was so high because of Jamestown’s environment, the colonists’ relations with the Powhatan Indians, and the settler’s skills and backgrounds.

In Jamestown, they had several problems in their environment, causing loads of people to die. Things like disease and drought were their environmental problems. In document A it says ¨… creeks became brackish as water level rose, reliable sources of fresh water would have been scarce...¨Without clean and healthy water many people died. Water is a valuable resource to everyone. Document E states, ¨Summer sickness kills half the colonist.¨ That shows that disease was so bad it killed half of all colonist, just in summer. The brackish water and the terrible diseases killed many