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Jamestown Part 2: A Famine, a Government, and Slavery1: FamineEarly PlansColonists at Jamestown never intended to grow all of their own food. Instead, they planned to supplement their supplies and crops with resources obtained through trade with Native Americans. The site of the Jamestown settlement was selected by colonists based on the ease of defending the site, rather than access to drinking water and game hunting. While the site itself provided protection for the colonists, they faced considerable difficulty in obtaining clean water and food.Because many of the original colonists had little or no experience with farming, the settlement was reliant upon occasional supply vessels from England and trade with Natives. However, supply ships arrived sporadically, making it difficult for the colonists to rely on them for survival. At the same time, trade with local tribes was nearly impossible due to conflicts.The poor relations with local Native People impacted more than just trade. Limited farming experience posed a challenge to the Jamestown colonists. They struggled for survival. When they left the palisade of the colony, they risked being kidnapped or murdered by the Powhatan tribes people. Instead, colonists found themselves boxed in their settlement for safety, severely limiting their ability to farm, hunt or trade with Natives.The initial group of settlers at Jamestown suffered from lack of food, drinkable water, Native attacks and disease. Between the time the settlement was established and the first supply ship’s arrival, the original settlers were nearly obliterated. Supply ShipsCaptain Christopher Newport arrived in January, 1608 and found only 38 of the original 104 settlers had survived. The combination of poor planning, Native American attacks, and lack of survival skills had decimated the original group of colonists. During the first supply stop, Newport delivered supplies and another group of settlers. At the same time, he oversaw further building of the colony’s defenses, expanded fortifications, and assigned armed men to guard the colony’s crops. When Newport arrived with the second supply ship in October, 1608, he brought additional supplies and settlers, including the first two female settlers. (Why was it important that women were starting to come to Jamestown?) With the reinforcement of the settlement and the addition of more settlers, Jamestown became more stable, although the colony still needed to begin trading with Native People.The third supply fleet consisted of nine ships, including the Sea Venture, the flagship of the Virginia Company of London. The fleet experienced severe storms on the crossing, resulting in one ship returning to London and the Sea Venture itself being grounded deliberately in Bermuda to prevent sinking. The other seven ships eventually arrived in Jamestown with several hundred new settlers but few supplies. Most of the supplies were aboard the Sea Venture, which was unable to continue the voyage. Captain Samuel Argall, pilot of one of the seven ships, returned to England with word of Jamestown’s difficulties, but additional supply ships did not arrive that year or the following spring.Trouble With the PowhatansBetween the arrival of the second and third supply fleets, Jamestown Captain John Smith attempted to expand contact and relations with the local tribes. While he had enjoyed limited success with some of the groups in the area, the Powhatans still refused to negotiate and trade with the settlers, instead preferring to attack and attempt to drive the settlers away. With a more stable settlement, Smith decided it was time to engage the Powhatan Confederacy directly in negotiations. Smith succeeded in establishing trade relations with the Powhatans. Chief Powhatan was not fully aware of the conditions the settlers were living in, but Smith was able to initiate trade relations with Native Americans that lasted as long as Smith remained in Jamestown. Unfortunately, as the Natives and the colonists began trade relations, Chief Powhatan soon learned of the weaknesses of the colony.Following an accident with gunpowder, Smith returned to England for medical treatment. With his departure, Chief Powhatan ended the truce and ceased trade with the colonists. John Ratcliffe attempted to reestablish relations with the Powhatans but was instead captured and tortured to death, leaving the colony without a strong leader. Attacks on colonists continued, making it dangerous for them to hunt, farm or attempt to trade with Natives.The Starving TimeThe Starving Time refers to a period of forced starvation experienced by the colonists at Jamestown during the winter of 1609 to 1610. Over the course of this winter, nearly all of the colonists perished from starvation. Only 60 of the original 500 colonists survived the winter. Only the timely arrival of additional colonists and supplies enabled Jamestown to continue.Leading into the winter of 1609 and 1610, the Jamestown colonists found themselves in a dire situation. More settlers had arrived, but adequate supplies were left in Bermuda. Due to a drought earlier in the growing season, colonists did not have enough crops to feed themselves through the winter. Between the failures of the crops, the grounding of the Sea Venture, poor relations with Natives, and the influx of additional settlers, the colony of Jamestown entered the winter poorly equipped for survival.The Starving Time was the period of forced starvation which occurred during this particular winter, referring to the several months of severe deprivation and starvation. Disease and hunger ravaged Jamestown. While historical records are scant, evidence suggests the colonists found themselves trading valuable weapons and tools for minimal food supplies from Natives and resorted to eating horses, dogs, cats, and rats. Two desperate colonists were tied to posts and left to starve as punishment for raiding the colonies' stores. One colonist even took to cannibalism, eating his own wife. While struggling to avoid starvation, colonists used their homes and fortifications as firewood, and conditions in Jamestown continued to deteriorate throughout the winter.Chief Powhatan, now aware of the horrible conditions of the colony, was able to hurry along the decimation of the colony by preventing significant trade and keeping the colonists isolated behind their fortifications. Colonists were unable to trade with nearby Natives for adequate supplies or to hunt in the area for enough game. When the survivors from the Sea Venture finally arrived in Jamestown on May 23, 1610, they found less than 100 survivors, many of whom were sick or dying. With such poor conditions, they decided to abandon Jamestown. All remaining survivors boarded the ships on June 7, 1610 and set sail down the James River. The few remaining survivors of the Starving Time and those recently arrived from Bermuda met a newly arriving fleet before they made it out of the river. The commander of the fleet, Thomas West, forced the survivors to return to Jamestown along with new settlers, supplies and food. While this decision was not popular with the survivors, it proved to be a turning point in the long-term success of the Jamestown colony.2: GovernmentLimited Monarchy Although many differences separated Spain and France from England, perhaps the factor that contributed most to their distinct paths of colonization was their form of government. Spain and France had absolute monarchies, but Britain had a limited monarchy. In the French and Spanish colonies, all authority flowed from the Crown to the settlers, with no input from the settlers themselves.An absolute monarchy is a state in which the monarch has sovereign power and controls all aspects of government without being checked by any representative assemblies. A limited monarchy is a state in which the power of the monarch is checked by other institutions, such as a senate or Prime Minister.The English kings who ruled the 13 original colonies reserved the right to decide the fate of their colonies as well, but they did not make decisions alone. The colonists drew upon their claims to traditional English rights and insisted on raising their own representative assemblies. Such was the case with the Virginia House of Burgesses. Modeled after the English Parliament, The House of Burgesses was the first popularly elected government in the New World.The House of BurgessesThe House of Burgesses held its first meeting in the choir room at Jamestown Church in the summer of 1619. Members would meet at least once a year with their royal governor to decide local laws and determine local taxation. Burgesses were elected representatives, but in order to vote in the election you had to be a white man who owned a fairly significant amount of property. King James I, a believer in the divine right of monarchs, attempted to dissolve the assembly, but the Virginians would have none of it. They continued to meet on a yearly basis to decide local matters. When they met for the first time in 1619, their first order of business was setting a minimum price for the sale of tobacco. Practicing DemocracyWhat is the importance of a small legislative body formed so long ago? The tradition established by the House of Burgesses was extremely important to colonial development. Each new English colony demanded its own legislature- and voice- in turn. Historians often ponder why the American Revolution was successful. The French, Russian, and Chinese Revolutions each ended with a rise to power of a leader who was less democratic than the pre-revolutionary monarchies that they overthrew. But starting with the Virginia House of Burgesses, Americans had 157 years to practice democracy. By the time of the Declaration of Independence, they were quite good at it.Part 3: Slavery Comes to AmericaThe English did not attempt to enslave the Native Americans when they arrived at Jamestown. Native Americans knew the land much better than the English, and would have been extremely difficult to keep and control as slaves. Slavery was a familiar institution to the English, but in the 1600's nearly all labor in England consisted of free workers and indentured servants. As plantations spread up the Potomac River, the demand for field workers exceeded the supply of people in the colonies and England willing to do such work. The solution was to obtain workers from another source- Africans were stolen from their homes and country and forced into slavery in the Americas. Two British pirate ships are credited with bringing the first Africans to Virginia in 1619. They intercepted a Portuguese ship in the Gulf of Mexico, then transported twenty Africans to Jamestown. The Portuguese had been importing Africans into slavery for over a century, and the Spanish enslaved Natives in Central and South America to work the mines and to grow crops. The Virginia colony lacked a legal definition of slavery until the 1660s, and the great increase in the slave population did not start until 1700. In the 1660s, however, the government of the colony (not the officials in London) established the legal framework for permanent slavery based on color.Every year between 1667 and 1672 the General assembly enacted legislation which began to define a Virginian's status by skin color. Similar laws followed in 1680, 1682, and 1686. By the end of the 1600s, slavery was established as system based entirely on race.There is a continuing debate about whether racism against blacks came before the adoption of a legal system supporting lifetime slavery in Virginia, or whether the practice of slavery triggered the colonists' racist attitudes. Blacks were not automatically slaves in the early colonial days. Some held property, married, and raised families outside the institution of slavery. ................
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