A History of Jamestown, Virginia
And check out the remarkable Jamestown Rediscovery
site.
Here's MSNBC's
coverage of this historic event.
105 men and boys land at Jamestown. Secret orders opened upon landing name Smith as one of the Councillors.
The General Assembly meets in the choir of the Jamestown church from July 30-August 4. First law: tobacco shall not be sold for under 3 shillings per pound.
John Rolfe writes in his diary, About the last of August came in a dutch man of warre that sold us twenty negars.
350 killed by surprise uprisings at plantations in Opechancanough's attempt at ethnic cleansing; Jamestown itself spared by warning from Indian boy, Chanco. Colony goes from 1,400 to 1050.
Captain Willam Tucker concludes peace negotiations with a Powhatan village by proposing a toast. The drink has been laced with poison by Dr. John Potts. 200 Powhatans die instantly. 50 more are slaughtered.
By the dawn of the 17th century, despite several disastrous attempts, England still lacked a viable claim to some part of the New World.
In 1606, James I tried once more to fruitfully impregnate the mythicaly rich, virgin land. He established 2 companies made up of merchant-adventurers eager to plumb the tantalizing riches of North America--these were the London Company and the Plymouth Company.
The first to send ships was the London Company, which sent forth three in December of 1606. James gave them three objectives: find gold, find a route to the South Seas, and find the Lost Colony of Roanoke.
Adverse winds held their ship near England for 6
weeks, and seriously depleted their food reserves.
Forty-five died on the voyage, but 101 men and 4 boys
finally landed on a 
semi-island in May,
1607. A record log tells us that within a month they were
able to compete the building of a large triangular fort
on the banks of a river the Indians knew as
"Powhatan's River," or "Powhatan's
Flu." The settlers named it the James, after their
King.
At first the climate seemed mild, the Indians friendly. As John Smith wrote, "heaven and earth never agreed better to frame a place for man's habitations."
Then came blistering heat, swarms of insects spawned in the nearby wetlands, typhus, unfit water supplies, starvation, fierce winters, Indian attacks, shiploads of inappropriately-prepared "Colonists" sent from a changing England that had no other place for them, and even a period of tyrannical martial law when missing church 3 times was a capital offense.
The troubles were exacerbated by the colonists themselves. Many of them we could call gentlemen-adventurers, "whose breeding," a contemporary said, "never knew what a day's labour meant." These were men, often lesser scions of nobility, with no future in overpopulated England, who were lured by the Virginia Company with promises of land and wealth--much as people were lured to California during the Gold Rush. But there was no gold in Virginia, and these "prospectors" didn't know how to farm, didn't know how to hunt, and--possibly feeling betrayed by the Virginia Company's promises, and lacking any land of their own--were not known for their spirit of cooperation either among themselves, nor with the local Indians of the Powhatan confederacy.
In 1609, a fleet of 9 ships from England had been caught in a tremendous hurricane, and the lead ship, the Sea Venture, had been wreched off Bermuda, its passengers--including many of the proposed new leaders of the colony--stranded for months. The rest of the ships had limped into Jamestown in August of 1609, their passengers mostly sick or hurt--one ship was said to carry the plague--and provided nothing but extra mouths to feed--400, in fact.
Apparently the only man who had been able to keep a modicum of peace, both in the colony and with the Indians, was John Smith. Even so, by 1609, the settlers had suffered one horror after another. Hundreds had died, but the worst was yet to come. Smith, injured in a gunpowder explosion, was shipped back to England, and with other leaders stranded on Bermuda, the colony of as many as 600 fell into chaos.
Then another river-freezing, icicled winter hit, and with it a period so bad it was later called the Starving Time. Arms and valuable worktools were traded for a pittance in food. The fields lay fallow. Housing was used as firewood. The weak settlers were easy pickings for the contemptuous Indians. Trapped within their walls by Powhatan's renewed enmity, the Jamestown residents ate their way through their livestock, their pets, mice, rats--and each other. Many turned to cannibalism, sneaking out at night--braving Indian ambush--to dig up the graves of both English and Indian dead. One contemporary wrote, in a joke that has spanned centuries, of a man who secretly killed his wife and ate her, until only the head was left. The author appended to the story, "Now, whether she was better roasted, boiled or carbonadoed (grilled), I know not, but of such a dish as powdered (salted) wife I never heard of."
While in the relative paradise of Bermuda, the hurricane survivors--including one passenger named John Rolfe, who had learned to smoke tobacco in London--built two ships from the wreckage of the Sea Venture, and finally resumed their journey. On May 24, 1610, approaching Jamestown, they came upon only 60 gaunt survivors of the "Starving Time"--nearly 90% of the colony had died during the winter.
The ships from Bermuda brought only more mouths, and few reserves of food. There were no crops, no tools, no housing, no hope. It was the end. Survivors and rescuers packed what they could on the ships, and headed down the river. Jamestown was abandoned..
But the ships were not 10 miles down the James when they were met with a boat whose occupants told them Lord De La Warr, newly appointed Governor of Virginia, was on his way with three ships filled with supplies and 150 new colonists. They were ordered to return to await the Governor.
Jamestown had been given a dramatic reprieve. Yet life remained onerous, and Jamestown had yet to find a crop, or a mineral, or an industry that would make the colony economically viable. The Virginia Company continued to pour people and resources into a venture with virtually no return of investment.
It was in 1612 that John Rolfe began growing tobacco. But Rolfe shunned the harsh product grown by the local Indians, Nicotiana Rustica. It would never sell in London. Somehow he obtained seeds from the coveted Nicotiana Tabacum strain then being grown in Trinidad and South America--though Spain had declared a penalty of death to anyone selling such seeds to a non-Spaniard.
Then Pocahontas entered Rolfe's life. Bad relations with the Indians had continued to plague the settlers. Once, when the Indians held several English captive, the colonists captured and held hostage the chief's beloved young daughter, Pocahontas. John Smith's later writings tell us that a few years earlier at the age of 12, Pocahontas had dramatically saved Smith from her father, the Powhatan's, wrath. The incident could more likely have been a ceremonial "saving," or nonexistent, but it is verifiably established that in the early days she did indeed help the colony--with food or with warnings of attack.
But it was four years later now, and Pocahontas was far from the naked child who with her friends used to turn cartwheels through the streets of a hopeful Jamestown. Now she was a young woman, and being held by the English. It was during this period, and in his Virginia tobacco fields that Rolfe began to woo--and win--Pocahantas. How much did Pocahontas know about tobacco? It is true that Powhatan women grew the food, while in a completely separate sector, a sort of back area of the village, the men grew the tobacco. Pocahontas, however, had a seemingly insatiable curiosity, and tended to roam where she wanted. (Her birth name was Matoaka; we know her by Pocahontas, a sort of Indian nickname which meant "Frisky," "Mischievous" or "Playful One"). It is likely she either knew a great deal about tobacco cultivation, or knew how to find answers if they were needed. The dramatic success of Jamestown's tobacco crop is credited not only to Rolfe's importation of the Spanish strain, but to his finding better ways of growing and curing it. We may only conjecture how much he was guided in cultivation and curing techniques by Pocahontas.
During captivity, Pocahontas received daily bible lessons, and eventually converted to Christianity, changing her name to "Rebecca." Rolfe married her in April of 1614, with Powhatan's approval. This act is credited with bringing 8 years of peace with the Indians, a period when the energies of the colonists could be devoted to the growing of its new cash crop--which indeed was soon to become the New World's currency.
For in 1614, in what has been called by at least one historian the most momentous event of the 17th century, the first shipment of Virginia tobacco was sold in London.
Two years later, in June, 1616, Rolfe and other leaders of the colony arrived in London. Rolfe brought Rebecca with him, where her exotic looks and regal bearing made her a popular rage, and she was presented to the court of Queen Anne as a princess. At the same time, the spectacle of a "savage" princess married to a tobacco farmer may have given rise to exceptionally cutting Elizabethan barbs.
But Rolfe's trip was very much about the colony's major export--tobacco. Despite James I's disapproval of the colony's dependence on a crop he despised, the very survival of his namesake colony could be at stake. And, of course, James could not ignore the enormous import duties Rolfe's Virginia tobacco, "Orinoco", brought to the royal treasury--Londoners and others around the world liked its taste and began demanding it. Since all sales had to be made through London, the English treasury grew with every transaction. Rolfe's trip was a success..
Tobacco became the rage, tobacco and nothing else. We have reports of it being grown in the very streets of Jamestown. Laws were passed forcing farmers to devote a percentage of their efforts to growing food.
By 1619 Jamestown had exported 10 tons of tobacco to Europe and was a boomtown. The export business was going so well the colonists were able to afford two imports which would greatly contribute to their productivity and quality of life. 20 Blacks from Africa and 90 women from England. The Africans were paid for in food; each woman cost 120 pounds of tobacco.
By 1639 Jamestown had exported 750 tons of tobacco. Tobacco was the American colonies' chief export. The Jamestown colonists had not found gold, nor a route to the South Seas, nor the Lost Colony on Roanoke Island. What they had found was tobacco. Tobacco had brought the settlement from wretched failure to giddying success. Tobacco had fed the need for labor and--since it wore out the soil every 4-7 years--the mad rush for land all through the waterways of the Chesapeake Bay--or as the entire area soon became known, "Tobacco Coast."
Tobacco can well be credited with establishing Jamestown as the first permanent English colony in the New World.
ADDENDA:
It's often forgotten that the first two successful settlements in America were commercial ventures, licensed by the King. A part of the problem in the early days of Jamestown was its population of men seduced with a promise of riches by the ever-recruiting companies.
England is credited for recognizing this, and for implementing what was then a radical idea for successful colonizations--a permanent settlement had to have women. Thus the English were successful in creating a permanent presence in the New World, unlike the more adventuring French and Spanish.
The London company (Jamestown) never made any money and was dissolved in the 1620s.
The prohibition against direct sales of tobacco to other countries (all such sales had to be made through London, where hefty excise taxes were levied) was one of the main aggravations leading to the American Revolution.
Jamestown was picked for its military advantages. It had a deep-water mooring for the ships, it was far enough up the James to be out of sight of the fearsome Spanish, and it was a semi-island--protected on three sides by the river and marshes.
But it was a swamp, and a phenomenally unhealthy location. Fresh water was a major problem, and often the colonists were reduced to drinking the brackish river water. Malaria and dysentery periodically raged through the community. It suffered disastrous fires and explosions in the early days, and even as a city it was burned down twice. Bacon burned it during his Rebellion, and a few years later it burned down again by accident. When the fourth State House burned in 1698, the site was abandoned, and the capitol moved to Williamsburg. Jamestown, out of the mainstream of the bustling colony now, gradually fell into ruins.
Preparations are now underway for a grand festival in 2007 to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the founding of Jamestown. Archeological efforts are attempting to establish more accurately the original location of the triangular wooden fort completed on June 15, 1607. A 19th Century paddlewheel boat churned up the earth under the original site, and it caved in early in the 20th century. It was thought the original site of the fort was now out in the James, but there is speculation that churches would never move from hallowed ground, and that the site of the ruins of the brick church may well be situated at a corner of the fort still on land. Many artifacts were lost when the site was a ferry landing, and travelers simply picked them up for souvenirs.
Jamestown, 1995
Statue of John
Smith Overlooking the James
The story of the gale and the survival of the ships' passengers on a tropical island much caught the fancy of Londoners; it is thought that Shakespeare based his last play, "The Tempest" (1619) on this very event.
Rolfe was castigated by James for marrying Pocahontas without consulting him first. James was upset not because Rolfe had married someone outside his race, but because he, a mere commoner, had married very much outside his class. In a travesty of a ceremony a few years earlier, James had actually had a reluctant Powhatan crowned "King of Virginia." Therefore Pocahontas was indeed a true Princess. James was outraged that should Powhatan die, Rolfe could conceivably succeed him as King, and thus suddenly become an equal in the brotherhood of royalty.
Rolfe named his brand of tobacco "Orinoco" undoubtedly to evoke the mystery and exotic adventure of tobacco-popularizer Sir Walter Raleigh's expeditions up the Orinoco river in Guiana in search of the legendary City of Gold, El Dorado.