Settlers Who Traveled to America In 1620, one hundred and thirty people boarded a ship for a sixty six day journey. Quarters were small on board, and many were affected by seasickness. They believed they were traveling to what would be a better life(The Land of the Brave). The struggles during their voyage to America, were just the beginning of what they would face once they arrived. When settlers came to explore and settle in the Americas, their lives would change drastically as conditions got worse because of disease, famine, and the struggles with the Native Americans. Disease and famine in America changed the settlers’ lives as colonists were getting sick and dying more often than before. Although most settlers survived the voyage,
winter was fast approaching and it brought disease to the colonists. “Being infected with the scurvy and other diseases which this long voyage and their inaccomodate condition had brought upon them. So as there died some times two or three of a day in the forsaid time, that of 100 and odd persons, scarce fifty remained” (Bradford lines 326-330). Diseases were affecting settlers and by winter the population had rapidly decreased. Famine was also a serious concern for the settlers. The Native Americans had a much greater knowledge of the food of the land. “That an Indian will travel many days with no other but this meal. Although Europeans bemoaned the lack of salt in Indian cuisine, they thought it nourishing. According to one modern reconstruction, Dawnland diets at the time averaged about 2,500 calories a day, better than those usual in famine-racked Europe”(Mann lines 163-167). The Indians could survive for days on one meal and the settlers were struggling just to eat everyday. The physical weakness brought on by famine did not help in the settlers struggles with the Native Americans. Disease was not the only difficulty the settlers had to face, the Native Americans did not make life easy either. Early meetings between the settlers and the Native Americans were uneasy. The Native Americans were trying to discover more about the settlers that had traveled to their lands, so they were always sneaking around watching them. “All this while the Indians came skulking about them, and would sometimes show themselves aloof off, but when any approached near them, they would run away; and once they stole away their tools where they had been at work and were gone to dinner” (Bradford lines 346-349). With little to no communication between the two groups, neither knew what the other was up to, which led to constant confrontation between the two groups. Native American attacks happened frequently but were over quickly. Mainly these attacks were to show power. “Now and then, as a sign of victory, slain foes were scalped, much as British skirmishes with the Irish sometimes finished with a parade of Irish heads on spikes” (Mann lines 247-249). The scalping of the deceased showed the power of the Native Americans over the settlers. The struggles with the Native Americans were just one of the things making life in America difficult. Because of disease, famine and the struggles with Native Americans, settlers arriving in America would see their lives change drastically. With new diseases in America on the rise many lives were lost. Additional lives were lost due to the turmoil with the Native Americans. The dream of a better life that enticed the settlers to travel to America was not as easily achieved as they had hoped.
There were vast differences between the difficulties experienced by the first settlers of Jamestown, Virginia and the Pilgrims who settled in New England in more ways than one. While the Pilgrims fled Europe because of religious persecution, the Jamestown colony was established solely as a business venture. While life was difficult for both groups of settlers upon reaching the new world, the Jamestown venture was doomed to fail from the beginning; but where the Jamestown settlers failed, the Pilgrims succeeded. The motives for traveling to America were different for each group but were instrumental in their eventual success or failure.
Christopher Columbus discovered the America’s for Spain in 1492. The explorers and settlers that settled in Central and South America were mostly Spanish and Portuguese. The English took notice of the Spanish success in the America’s, so they decided to explore the upper part of the America’s, North America, in the late 1500’s.
During the 1700's, people in the American colonies lived in very distinctive societies. While some colonists led hard lives, others were healthy and prosperous. The two groups who showed these differences were the colonists of the New England and Chesapeake Bay areas. The differentiating characteristics among the Chesapeake and New England colonies developed due to economy, religion, and motives for colonial expansion. The colonists of the New England area possessed a very happy and healthy life. This high way of living was due in part to better farming, a healthier environment, and a high rate of production because of more factories. The colonists of the Chesapeake Bay region, on the other hand, led harder lives compared to that of the colonists of New England. The Chesapeake Bay had an unhealthy environment, bad eating diets, and intolerable labor.
The colonists immigrated to the New World in search of religious freedom. Their entire early experience was a constant struggle for survival. To the colonists the New World was their way out of poverty and into the
Epidemic diseases brought to the state by Spanish colonists and missionaries in the late 1700s to the early 1800s, turned out to be the most powerful and discreet method to surmount Native American population. The impact of the missionarie...
Disease was always something on the emigrants mind when traveling the Oregon trail, because they never knew when a friend or themselves would succumb to it. According to the Frontier trails, an estimated 50,000 people died from disease (Underwood). The emigrants of the oregon trail had to live through the fact knowing disease could strike at any time and claim another victim. It was hard for the colonists to deal with disease, they had a hard time telling which one it was and often required loads of work to help heal them. According to the National Parks Service, the most common disease were cholera, dysentery, mountain fever, measles, food poisoning, smallpox, and pneumonia (Death and Danger along the Trails). As one can see, the colonists had a hard time figuring out what beast they were fighting, and how to fight it, which is why they ost so many lives. As one can see, the colonists had a hard time figuring out what beast they were fighting, and how to fight it, which is why they lost so many
...ool to receive an education. However, being new in America, they were apt to make many mistakes, which in some cases proved deadly. In all, their experiences helped them to develop knowledge of their new homeland. They also helped them to make better decisions and better the future for their family.
They were unprepared for life in the wilderness. Most had the impression that everything would be easy in the new world. The men and boys who first settled in Jamestown were townsmen and gentlemen. “They had come expecting to find gold, friendly Indians, and easy living.” (America: A Narrative History, 57) This information was given to them before making the journey to the new world. The settles were also told they would be provided with everything they would need, but supplies from England were undependable. When they arrived there was no town or any shelter waiting for them. They had to learn how to hunt and grow their own food, which they were not use to or even knew how to do in this untamed world. Captain John Smith took charge of the colony ensuring that of the 38 original survivors had to pull their own weight. He used various means to archive his goals and through his efforts Jamestown pulled through. After a period called the “Starving Time,” (America: A Narrative History, 60), where most of the colonist died, a man named John Rolfe provided a way for the colony to survive. He was able to acquire tobacco seeds from the Spanish and with it he made the colony a source of trade (America: A Narrative History, 61). Tobacco and other grown good where used to improve the lives of the colonies, but their daily lives were still very harsh as they were
Since gentleman were unaccustomed to labor, there were very few men who could raise crops for the colony. In 1609, the Chesapeake colony had lost three-quarters of its population due to famine during the winter. The Native Americans’ refusal to trade with the Chesapeake colonists also took a heavy toll on their food supply. The colonists had to turn to other sources of food such as mice, horses, and dogs. For they claimed that they had eaten more in one day back in England than they had in one week in the New World [Doc1]. In 1610, a terrible drought and another series of summertime illnesses had set in. The colonists were plagued with fevers, diarrhea, and swellings which caused their numbers to go down by another 50% [Doc 7]. The Puritans had a diet which was high in sea salt which weakened their immunity system and made them more vulnerable to diseases. They encountered cold related diseases such as pneumonia, frostbite, and scurvy. Within the first of two months of their arrival, two to three Puritans died every day. The climate of the New England colonies did not serve them as well. The land was too stony and sandy for them to plant many crops, and the growing season was only five months long because of the long, cold winters. These difficulties put a wall between the colonists and their goals for creating a society whether it was
On September 6, 1620, 102 men, women and children from England boarded a small cargo boat called the Mayflower and set sail for the New World. The passengers left their homes in England in search of religious freedom from the King of England. Today they are known as "pilgrims."
The Effects of Colonization on the Native Americans Native Americans had inherited the land now called America and eventually their lives were destroyed due to European colonization. When the Europeans arrived and settled, they changed the Native American way of life for the worse. These changes were caused by a number of factors including disease, loss of land, attempts to export religion, and laws, which violated Native American culture. Native Americans never came in contact with diseases that developed in the Old World because they were separated from Asia, Africa, and Europe when ocean levels rose following the end of the last Ice Age. Diseases like smallpox, measles, pneumonia, influenza, and malaria were unknown to the Native Americans until the Europeans brought these diseases over time to them.
George sat on a old wooden chair, mouth parched. It’s the “Starving Time,” He sees as his 73 year old father fall dead. He takes one look at him and begins to cry, but his cry is drowned out by the roar of the indians. He looks up to see a spear hurtling towards him. This fiction story was set in 1610 Jamestown. The residents of Jamestown did not have very good associations with the indians. The starving time was a period of time where the residents of Jamestown ran out of food and water. The number one question of this essay though is “Why did so many colonists die?”
When the first settlers arrived in the Americas during the 15th century, some of the first literature they produced were descriptions of their new life far from the English mother country. The Puritans settlers specifically, owing to their emphasis on education. William Bradford, governor of the Plymouth Colony in what would become Massachusetts, is a well-known writer of these types of colonial “chronicles”. In his work Of Plymouth Plantation, Bradford provides a chilling description of the colony’s first winter. He describes the colony’s perilous position when he writes “Being thus passed the vast ocean, and a sea of troubles before in their preparation (as may be remembered by that which went before), they had now no friends to welcome them nor inns to entertain or refresh their weather-beaten bodies; no houses or much less town to repair to, to seek for succor.”
In Of Plymouth Plantation (1630), the author, William Bradford exhibits the struggles he and his group went through to survive their exploration. Bradford led a group of Puritans and traveled on a disease-infested ship with poor conditions in order to arrive at Cape Cod. Upon their arrival, they were greeted with almost no civilization and nobody to aid them. They soon realized the land that they arrived on was abandoned Native territory, but still decided to settle there. Throughout their stay, they struggled with starvation, disease, and fear of being attacked by the savages. They eventually undertook a minor attack from the savages and had a small battle where no one was injured, and a little while later, a bold Native presented himself to the explorers and spoke to them with broken English. It turned out that he had come to make peace and help the Europeans. The Pilgrims began to get along with
arduous travel by land and sea. It was no unexpected that they never return. Travel during those days was filled with danger. Today we take travelling far distances for granted. The risks are negligible. People are more concerned about whether they travel first-class or economy.