Jamestown 1607 houses settlement
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The First Residents of Jamestown
This webpage lists all the original settlers of Jamestown. This brief journey offers pictures and explanations of important events in the development of the first English settlement in the New World. In December, while exploring the Chickahominy River, Smith ran into a communal hunting party under the leadership of Powhatan’s younger brother or kinsman, Opechancanough.
Unfortunately, the area was plagued by drought at the time, and the colonists had a difficult time growing crops.
Newport Returns to England
On June 22, after he believed the colonists were safe, Captain Newport left for England to get more supplies for the new settlement.
Relationship with the Powhatans
The Powhatan Confederacy was large and powerful and consisted of many tribes that spoke an Algonquian dialect.
- The Confederacy was led by a single chief, Wahunsonacock, who was also referred to as The Powhatan or Chief Powhatan.
- The Powhatan territory covered most of the present-day area of Tidewater Virginia.
- It went from the Potomac in the north to the Carolinas in the south, from the Chesapeake Bay inland to the west of what is now Richmond.
- It is estimated the Powhatan Confederacy was the largest Indian Confederation in the history of North America.
Chief Powhatan tried to establish friendly relations with the colonists by sending food, which they accepted — and then expected.
For fun, try out the Jamestown history quiz at the bottom of the homepage. Some historians believe that shortly after the English landed in 1607, he ordered killed the last survivors of John White‘s “Lost Colony,” men, women, and children who possibly had, in the twenty years since their disappearance, assimilated among the Algonquian-speaking Indians.
Founding Jamestown
On December 20, 1606, three ships and 104 settlersset sail from London.Filling both traditional and nontraditional roles, women were vital in the settlement of Jamestown. Initially, the immigrants were indentured servants. The Virginia Company treasurer Sir Edwin Sandys saw the assembly as a way of building personal and political investment in the colony, while also, perhaps, muting growing criticism of the Virginia Company at home.
They named it “James Towne.” Both the river and the settlement were named after King James I.
The spot the colonists chose to settle appeared to be uninhabited but was within the hunting and fishing grounds of some tribes in the Powhatan Confederacy. Some survived by leaving Jamestown and moving to Point Comfort, near present-day Hampton, Virginia.
Over the course of the winter, many died from starvation and disease.
They also dug up dirt that was filled with the same flakes. Nearby is Historic Jamestowne, a living history museum that includes a reconstructed Fort James and a small representation of a Powhatan village.
Significance
Jamestown is important to American History because it was the first successful English settlement in the New World.
AP US History Alignment
Jamestown is part of the following units, topics, and chapters in the AP US History curriculum:
APUSH Unit 1: 1491–1607
APUSH Unit 2: 1607–1754
Notes
Definition
Jamestown refers to the first successful permanent English settlement in North America.
Later, during the winter of 1585–1586, English colonists from Roanoke lived among the Chesapeake Indians and explored the Eastern Shore. Contemporary accounts describe horrifying scenes—settlers eating rodents, shoe leather, and eventually, it is alleged, resorting to cannibalism. He ordered them to return, revitalizing the colony and reasserting English control.
The Role of the Powhatan Confederacy: Conflict and Cooperation
Central to Jamestown’s survival—and its struggles—was its relationship with the Powhatan Confederacy, a powerful alliance of over 30 Algonquian-speaking tribes led by Chief Wahunsenacawh, known to the English as Chief Powhatan.
The rebellion was the result of a political dispute between Governor Berkeley and Virginia colonists, led by landowner Bacon, over how to deal with attacks from remnants of the Powhatan Tribes on the frontier.
Many of the colonists who banded together under Bacon were former indentured servants — black and white — who lived on small farms that were unable to compete with the larger plantations.
Convicted of stealing oatmeal, one man suffered a needle through his tongue, after which he was lashed to a tree until he starved.
In June Dale’s men faced down a Spanish reconnaissance ship at Point Comfort at the mouth of the James. According to the popular tale—whose accuracy is debated by historians—she saved Captain John Smith from execution by her father in 1607.
He traveled as far as the Fall Line, near present-day Richmond, Virginia. These events were unknown to Sir Thomas Smythe in London, but from his perspective, the Virginia undertaking already required a major reorganization. Of a population that had peaked at almost 400 the previous August, only 90 half-starved colonists survived.
During the previous summer, sickness had arrived anew to Jamestown.
By 1644 and the Third Anglo-Powhatan War (1644–1646), however, Virginia’s population was too large and the Indians too weak to pose a serious threat to the colony.
In 1610, a new group of settlers and supplies arrived, which helped the settlement recover.
The Peace of Pocahontas was coming to an end.
Great Charter of Virginia — November 18, 1618
Despite the popularity of tobacco, the Virginia Company was still in debt, so it decided to create a way to encourage people to pay to emigrate from England to Virginia.