2.2 THE JAMESTOWN COLONY

Angela Brown

totallyhistory.com

LEARNING TARGETS

I Can…

1. List reasons why England was interested in exploring and

colonizing the Americas.

2. Describe the English colonies of Roanoke and Jamestown,

and Native American reactions to these settlements.

3. Explain the role of tobacco in Virginia and how it

contributed to Bacon’s Rebellion.

VOCABULARY : P R I VAT E E R , C H A R T E R , J O I N T- S T O C K C O M PA N Y, R O YA L C O L O N Y, L E G I S L AT U R E , H O U S E O F B U R G E S S E S , I N D E N T U R E D S E R VA N T, B A C O N ’ S R E B E L L I O N

Bellringer: Why do people want to own

things such as land and other forms of

property? What image does ownership convey?

ENGLISH EXPLORERS :

John Cabot:

An Italian, whose original name was Giovanni Caboto,

Cabot was the first known explorer sailing for the

English to cross the Atlantic.

He may have reached what is now Newfoundland,

Canada, in 1497.

Cabot never returned from his second voyage to the

Americas. elizabethan-era.org.uk

MORE EXPLORERS

Sir Martin Frobisher:

He sailed 3 voyages across

the Americas in 1576, 1577

& 1578.

He was searching for a

trade route to Asia through

North America.

The Northwest Passage

exists north of Canada but

is extremely hazardous and

not successfully navigated

until 1906.

libweb5.princeton.edu

MORE EXPLORERS

John Davis:

He made three voyages to NA searching for the Northwest

Passage in 1585, 1586, & 1587

Henry Hudson:

He explored for both the English and the Dutch.

In 1609, during his third voyage he discovered the river now

known as the Hudson, in New York.

He sailed 150 miles upstream, realized it wasn’t the NW passage

and turned back.

hudsonriverhistory.com

MORE EXPLORES

Sir Francis Drake:

English adventurers were taking their own shortcut to

wealth.

Sailing as privateers, privately owned ships hired by a

government to attack foreign ships, they raided Spanish

treasure ships and cities in the Americas.

Elizabeth I, the Protestant queen of England from 1558 –

1603, had authorized these raids.

DRAKE CONTINUED

Drake was the most famous of Queen Elizabeth’s “sea dogs,” as

the English privateers were called.

In 1586, Drake raided St. Augustine in Florida and several other

Spanish port cities in the Americas.

His thefts severely weakened the finances of the Spanish empire.

As an explorer in 1577 – 1580, Drake became the first English

captain to sail around the world.

en.wikipedia.org

R E A SO N S F O R E N G LI SH I N T E R E ST I N P E R M A N E N T SE T T L E M E N T I N T H E

A M E R I C A S

1. They wanted a base in the Americas from which to attack Spanish

ships and cities.

2. Convinced they would find a Northwest Passage through the American

continent to the Indies, they would need supply stations in NA for

trading ships.

3. They wanted new markets with the NA or the colonies to buy English

cloth and other products.

4. The Americas would be a good place to send those who could not find

work or homes in England due to overcrowding.

THE ROANOKE DISASTER

Sir Walter Raleigh tried twice to start a colony on Roanoke

Island in the 1580s.

Roanoke is one of a chain of islands called the Outer Banks

that run along the coast of what is now North Carolina.

The first attempt ended in 1585, when the starving settlers

abandoned the colony and returned home.

The results of the second attempt in 1587 remains a

mystery.

ROANOKE MYSTERY

Its settlers seemed to have vanished.

A supply expedition from England in 1590 found

only empty buildings at the settlement. On a

doorpost was carved the only clue to the fate of the

settlers – the word Croatoan.

Croatoan being the name of a nearby NA group.

Did the settlers join the Indians or were they

defeated by them?

THE LOST COLONY

ncpedia.org

THE JAMESTOWN SETTLEMENT

In 1606, several Englishmen made plans to establish another colony.

These businessmen first had to get a charter allowing them to form a

joint-stock company called the Virginia Company.

Charter – a certificate of permission from the king.

Joint-stock company – a company funded and run by a group of

investors who share the company’s profits and losses.

In 1607 the Virginia Company set 100 colonists to Virginia, formerly

named by Raleigh earlier.

xtimeline.com

JAMESTOWN

They started a settlement about 60 miles from the mouth of

the James River, in the Chesapeake Bay region.

It was named Jamestown in honor of their King, James I.

TASK:

Write an advertisement designed to attract young English

men and women to migrate to the Virginia Colony. Use

Comparing Primary Sources from page 39 before deciding

how best to “sell” Virginia to the English.

THE SETTLERS’ HARDSHIPS

The Jamestown Colony failed for several reasons:

1. Most of the settlers were not used to doing the

hard work required to start a settlement. • They had come to get rich quick. Goldsmith’s etc.• Some were born into wealthy families and had no

experience with manual labor• They ignored the necessary tasks and searched

for gold.en.wikipedia.orgRecreated Powhatan settlement at Jamestown

FAILURE

2. The village was little better than a swamp swarming with

disease-bearing mosquitoes. Many of the settlers died of

disease.

3. Leadership in the colony was poor. The squabbled about

minor matters even in the face of starvation.• In 1608, Colonist John Smith emerged as a strong leader• Smith was a brave, blunt, experienced soldier• He said, “ You must obey this now for a law, that he that will

not work shall not eat…for the labors of 30 or 40 honest and industrious men shall not be consumed to maintain a 150 idle loiterers.”

FAILURE

Smith soon left the colony because of an injury and sailed back to England.

The colony suffered starvation and sickness for the first 10 years.

From October 1609 to March 1610 was remembered as the starving time.

The settlers would have died without the food and water provided by the

Native Americans.

Meanwhile in England, writers were publishing pamphlets calling Virginia

a paradise.

By 1623, 5,500 settlers are had migrated. 4,000 died shortly after arriving

in the colony.

GOVERNING THE COLONY

In 1609 the Virginia company received a new charter appointing a governor

who would live in the colony.

Still unable to turn a profit, King James took their charter and shut it down in

1624.

Virginia became a royal colony, with a governor appointed by the king.

It also had a legislature, or lawmaking assembly beginning in 1619 made up

of representatives from the colony called burgesses. The assembly came to be

called the House of Burgesses.

This was the first instance of limited self-government in the English colonies.

Shortly after their arrival,

the English were attacked by

about 200 NA.

An English cannon forced

them to retreat.

Englishmen then traveled

to neighboring NA villages to

make a tense, uneasy truce.

NATIVE AMERICANS

en.wikipedia.org

THE JAMESTOWN MASSACRE, 1622

The Powhatan Indians and Jamestown settlers mingled freely.

The Indians often ate and slept in the settlers houses, borrowing possessions

even firearms.

At 8 o’clock on that Good Friday, Indians throughout the widely spaced

settlements suddenly attacked their hosts. Others descended from the woods to

slaughter and cut off escape routes. Chief Opechancanough intended to wipe out

the English.

Most of the outlying settlements were destroyed.

The warning of a Christianized Indian, Chanco? name uncertain, saved the

town from complete destruction. 347 died.

SETTLERS DEFENDING

ushistoryimages.com

NATIVE AMERICANS REACT

The settlers stuck back within days killing as many or more

NA.

An uneasy truce was patched up.

Their last major attack on the English in the Chesapeake

occurred in 1644.

Opechancanough participated at age 70.

The attack failed and he was shot in the streets of

Jamestown.

GROWING TOBACCO

Tobacco saved the Virginia colonist from failure.

Tobacco is a plant native to the Western Hemisphere but

was unknown in Europe.

In 1616, John Rolfe shipped some tobacco to Europe. It

quickly became popular.

By 1640, Virginia and Maryland were shipping 3 million

pounds a year to Europe.

Settlers had to move

out of Jamestown and

form plantations on the

banks of the James, York,

Rappahannock and

Potomac rivers and

along the Chesapeake

bay.

They could then grow

and transport their

tobacco more easily.

CASHING INhistory.howstuffworks.com

THE PROMISE OF LAND

Laborers were needed to grow large tobacco crops in Virginia.

The headright system developed giving each “head” of the family

the right to 50 acres of land in entice them to come to Virginia.

English landowners forced farmers off their rented land and

turned fields into pastures to raise livestock and make more

money.

England was swarming with young people in search of food and

work.

They were called “masterless” men and women because they did

not have a master, or patron.

INDENTURED SERVANTSTo pay for the crossing to Virginia, masterless people

became indentured servants.

They would work for a master for usually seven years,

under a contract called an indenture.

The master paid the cost of their voyage and gave

them food and shelter.

Some indentures promised a piece of land to the

servant at the end of the indenture. Others gave the

servant’s headright to the master.

SH

lindagailwestrich.ipage.com

What do you see happening in this photo?

Between 100,000 to

150,000 servants came to

work in the 1600s.

Most were 18-22 years

old, unmarried and poor.

Few lived long enough to

claim their land due to the

hot climate and disease.

SERVANTS AND SLAVES

The first group of

about 20 Africans

arrived in Virginia in

1619.

There numbers

remained small due to

their high cost and high

deathrates.

BACON’S REBELLION

Settlers pushed farther west in search of new farmland.

Former indentured servants lacking the money to buy farmland tried

to take it from the Indians instead.

Clashes resulted.

In 1676, planter Nathaniel Bacon, raised an army to fight the NA.

Governor William Berkeley, angry that Bacon was acting without his

permission, declared him a rebel and gathered an army to stop him.

Bacon turned his army around.

NATHANIEL BACON

Bacon complained that Berkeley had• Failed to protect the western settlers• And that they had to little voice in colonial government

Bacon and his supporters attacked and burned Jamestown.

Bacon control nearly all of Virginia for a time.

He died suddenly, probably of illness, and the Rebellion crumbled.

The Rebellion showed frontier settlers were frustrated with a

government only interested in the wealthy planters and the poorer

colonists were unwilling to tolerate such a government.epicworldhistory.blogspot.com

EXIT SLIP

1. Summarizing Main Idea: Describe the challenges the English

faced in settling Virginia.

2. Identifying Central Issues: North America was a difficult,

dangerous place for both the Spanish and the English. Why did

they want to settle there?

3. Persuasive Writing: Write a paragraph from the point of view of

Nathaniel Bacon, arguing that the government in Virginia should

protect western planters from NA attacks.