Overpopulation In Jamestown

Imagine a civilization that's population that was cut in half, and always has a problem or a flaw that some way always intervened. Well then you should be thinking of Jamestown. Now their population had surprising variables that had so many different causes to why it decreased. They also had a very interesting relationship with the Powhatan indians, and by that I mean they had a classic historic love/hate relationship.
Disease! They were struck with disease and that made their lives horrible. In the document created by Dennis B. Blanton states “Also, historian Carville V. Earle attributed … disease in the early years to Jamestown’s position at the sault-fresh water intrusion, where filth introduced into the river tended to fester rather than flush away.”(55). This talks about how they would throw away, or dispose of their waste by throwing it in the river, and this was where they get their water. The water though, was contaminated and not able to be properly

consumed. Then in the document contributed by J. Frederick Fausz contained the quote of Captain John Smith’s report saying “many dead, some sick.” This entails that many have died and some colonists are sick. It doesn't really state why some died but there could have been some dieing due to sickness. In this passage they go into more reasons to why colonists have died, but in the population count you can see that it varied severely and the dates also helped show how dramatic these changes were (Fausz 63). In conclusion to the paragraph, we can see that disease had a great impact on the civilization.
There was a time of starvation that passed over them and they even had droughts that prevented crops from growing which made life in Jamestown even more harder on them. The document containing information in the rainfall and drought shows that the longest period of drought they suffered was from 1605-1612 (The Lost and Jamestown Droughts 57). This shows that for a while they didn’t have a lot of water to help with the crops that need to be grown which let to less options for food. In the document that was collaborated on was with Ivor Noel Hume and Alfred A. Knopf stated “No one doubted that this new supply of grain would help, but it would not be enough to last the winter.”(61). In this quote it talks about how the Powhatan Indians and the English had a dispute over the grain. It lead to deaths of two of the indians that also lead to forceful take from the indians grain that also didn’t help with there relationship. The document created by Fausz contains the information of this quote “Powhatan’s siege of Jamestown (the “Starvation Time”) kills some 110 colonists from famine and disease; another 33 slain; 37 desert”. (63). At this point you can see that that the famine and disease are a huge part of the death in jamestown and both had horrible effects on the colony. In the way of concluding, the evidence shows that starvation did not help the people of Jamestown.
When your occupations lead to decrease in population, you know you are in trouble.

In those times there were a lot of gentleman, laborers, and people who didn’t know what to do or had unknown ocupations. In May 1607 only 82 out of 110 people had known occupations and in January 1608 only 69 out of 120 had known occupations. (Smith 59). The report of captain John Smith also states “Note: A gentleman was a person of wealth who was not used to working with his hands. Boyes were young servants.” This shows that most people were not able to do anything to help contribute to the community, have an unknown occupation which helped none, or the were devoted to work for the gentleman which only helped the people who did nothing. You can also see that if they did have an occupation then there was only one of them or none (Smith 59). This is important because the lack of skill made a huge impact on how emergencies were handled and how they lived. In conclusion, they couldn’t do anything to help life on the

colony.
Horrible work ethics, nasty disease, and deadly starvation are all thing that lead to the town of Jamestown’s decrease in population. Disease destroyed the lives of so many that it made life hard to live. They had times of scarce food which took another pleasure away from the life they had to live. It also wasn’t ok to have about half of your population doing nothing or not knowing what to do. Yet, there truly is a silver lining to every grey cloud...Their suffering helped us learn from diseases so we can avoid them, their starvation and droughts helped us start to prepare for a drought or help our food production skills, and their lack of skill makes us and drives us to become better at what we do. It make us want to learn, because knowledge really is power. Through their suffering, we thrive!