The Jamestown Massacre
104 men were sent to form Jamestown in 1607. 4 months after they arrived, 70 had died. Thousands were sent to take their place over the next 3 years, but they also died. Why?
* Jamestown was founded on may 14 1607, by a small group led by Christopher Newport who was hired by the London company to transport colonists.
* Jamestown was the first permanent English settlement in America.
* Many settlers died in the winter of 1609-1610.
* Survivors were encouraged to stay by more settlers and supplies which came the following June
* In 1612 tobacco farming was started
* Native Americans often attacked the village.
* Jamestown was burned down in 1676
Could the reason that so many died have been starvation?
It seems that the winter of 1609 was so bad that the many of the colonists died of starvation. They were made to eat their own excrement and flesh. They ate Indians and animals from the colony, including horses, dogs and rats, or anything they could find. But this was hard to believe, as the island was full of food. Maybe the cause of death was drought. Scientists have discovered that the worst drought in many years was between 1604 and 1609. They can tell this because of the tree samples that have been taken. No water meant that crops wouldn't grow, and animals would die, as well as humans. The problem with this theory is that down river, there was excess food. The men could have been too weak to gather food. Why?
Maybe the colonists died because of disease?
The men could have got diseases from the water that they drank. The position of the settlement was not ideal, although it was very good military position. The water that the settlers drank was out of the river, but the water around the island was stagnant, it didn't move. All the sewage from the island was poured straight into the river, this meant that the men were drinking raw sewage. A lot of men died of 'Bloody Flux' and typhoid, these are typical sewage related diseases. The colonists knew about the risks of drinking the water, but they had no choice, they had to drink something.
Internal Politics could have played a part in the unexplained deaths at Jamestown.
Before Christmas in 1606 there was a dispute over who would lead the expedition to colonise Jamestown.
Against all Odds is a very interesting Documentary that follows the early settlement of Jamestown in the 17th century .With endless against the odds situations thrown out in from of the people of Jamestown left and right things seemed bleak. But a lot of perseverance from the early settlers including the Documentaries depiction of the original leader John Smith things seemed to resolve themselves. In Documentary there were several parts where it conceited with what is in chapter three of the Textbook the American Promise. For example, In the Documentary when the subject of the Tobacco business came up it was exampled in the same way as the first page of chapter three. With examples of how the product was grown and distributed out into the world. Making it a very valuable trade to be doing although very labor intensive, which is why it would soon lead into the slave trade. Something that was briefly shown in the documentary mainly to show what lengths the people of Jamestown were willing to go to make things work out in their new home.
In sum, many colonists were killed for various reasons. These reasons include sickness and disease, lack of resources, and where Jamestown was chosen to be built. This analysis was important because it included most of the main reasons why many Jamestown colonists
Captain John Smith led the colonists, due to his past experiences and being elected to do so by the London partners. However, the Jamestown colonists are a whole different story. Around the time of 1606, King James established a new religion that many people disagreed with. “These people became two distinct bodies or churches, and in regard of distance of place did congregate severally” (Norton Anthology of American Literature, 123). They began to meet separately since the amount of people who did not follow the Church of England was abundant.
In the first shipload of people they had about 104 people on board that ship. Many of those people died from diseases they picked up from exploring. In the summer of 1607 a sickness kills half the people that settled there. (Document E) This was a major downfall for the colonies because most of those people were Probably gentlemen and labourers (Document C). Also in the summer of 1609 and 1610 60 settlers died from a disease. Many of these people who died were laborers and gentlemen. Many of these people speaded these diseases to other people and food they shared (Nightmare in Jamestown.). I think some of these diseases could be the Bubonic plague or the black death. These diseases returned in Nov.-May 1610 when 110 colonist die from famine and diseases.
In document F, you can see that there is such a shortage of food that people resort to stealing their fellow colonists' clothes to pay for things like “butter and beef out of a ship”. You can also use the example of a resource shortage in document B, which shows a graph of the average rainfall during the first few years that the colonists lived there. From 1605-1612, Jamestown went through it’s longest, harshest drought. This meant there was very little food and water during that time. When you remember that the time period we are looking at is only from 1607 to 1610, it seems like that drought could have been a major factor in why a lot of the colonists died. Lastly, document D shows us that it was not just the colonists struggling. Native people also were having trouble finding food. An expedition of colonists was sent out to try to trade with some of the natives, but they had to force them to give anything. All the colonists got was a small shipload of grain and some very angry natives. The crew of that ship determined that the amount of grain they had would not do anything substantial for the colony, so they headed back to England, eating the grain along the way. So the colony never even got the grain, but they did have to deal with some very angry natives, which on its own is another reason that a lot of them didn’t
Another reason why so many colonists died was because of their relations with the Native Americans. If they did not cut people’s heads of (Document D) because they didn’t want to trade, maybe they could of got some food. They also went through a series of 3 wars with the Powhatan Natives. The first war lasted from 1610-1614 (4 years) which really affected the colonists during the Starving time. If they did not massacre the Natives, maybe they could've traded for
Starting with the Jamestown and others in the Chesapeake region, one immediately notices that those who established Jamestown were not prepared to settle down. The Jamestown colony was started for one main purpose, to make money. The Virginia Company founded Jamestown. The “Elizabeth” was the ship that took over those looking to settle to the Chesapeake Bay area. On the ship were 114 passengers and of those, 72 of them were males. These males were
They arrived on a ship with 108 men led by Bartholomew Goznold, the founding father no one knew, who found Jamestown. They were sent by an English company in
The English had two main colonies in the new world, Jamestown and Plymouth. The first colony was Jamestown, established in Virginia in 1607. Jamestown was settled by Captain John Smith, and was named after King James I. Tobacco was the main export of Jamestown, and became the basis of the Jamestown economy, sending more than 50,000 lbs of the plan back to Europe by 1618 (textbook 46). Jamestown had a very rocky start, many colonists dying in the first few years of the settlement, and the settlers had many problems with natives. Shortly after the arrival of English colonists the Natives attacked them, and were finally forced back by a canon from the English. A very uneasy truce was finally settled between the natives, called the Powhatans, and the English (textbook 44-5). Economic growth and expanding their territories were the main priorities of the English in the Jamestown colonies.
... arrive have been shorter then the fate of the colony may have been different.
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
Have you ever heard the term, “Don’t drink the Kool-Aid?” or “You have drank the Kool-Aid.”? Well, ”Drinking the Kool-Aid” means you have done something that others have told you to do or did yourself. This saying comes from the cult society led by Reverend Jim Jones, named Jonestown. Jonestown was a small community in the jungle of Guyana, South America. After getting word of people coming to investigate the society, Jones had committed a mass suicide by poisoning Kool-Aid and giving it to the people of Jonestown.
Bloom, Harold, ed. Modern Critical Interpretations: William Shakespeare's Othello. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1987.
Louis Lumière, The Cinematograph, La Nature, 12 October 1895. In Auguste and Louis Lumière. (Jacques Rittaud-Hutinet, ed.) Letters. London: Faber and Faber, 1995. p.302.
Criminology has been defined as the scientific study of the making of laws, the breaking of laws, and society’s reactions to the breaking of the laws (Riedel & Welsh, 2011). While criminology focuses on trying to explain the behavior of the offenders, it also tries to understand four central themes such as the conflict between personal liberty and the safety of the community. When the different law enforcement agencies, courts and corrections are on the same page they are seen as working together. The second theme explores what happens when one system affects the others.The third and fourth themes deal with ethical and legal decisions as well as ensuring those decisions being made after the information is scientifically gathered and properly evaluated. Criminology or criminologist study causes if the crimes committed by the individual and are known to work on the front end of the criminal justice system. The study of criminology relies on scientific theories and methods in order to understand and evaluate criminality. It looks at the causes reviewing the intentions, motivations, and background of the offenders involved in their studies.