Jamestown Colony Failure

After countless attempts by the English to create a settlement in North America, the explorers of 1606 finally succeeded. The Virginia Company was hoped that setting up Jamestown would pave the way for the English to set up future settlements up and down the East Coast and eventually the United States itself. “The Jamestown colony was an entrepreneurial effort, organized and financed by the Virginia Company of London, a start-up venture chartered eight months earlier; its business model was to extract profits from the gold, silver, and other riches supposedly to be found in that region of North America.” (Price, 19) Since no one knew how big the North American continent was, the Virginia Company believed to find a trade route by river from

Luckily for a few investors, they were actually on the three ships. “The colony’s ultimate success would come at a fearsome price; disease, hunger, and hostile natives left behind a toll of misery and death. Most of the 105 or so adventurers who went on the ships would be dead within months, and that was only the first wave of mortality to hit the colony.” (Price, 19) It’s impressive that the Jamestown settlement managed to survive at all.

The foreign territory of Virginia would have been a challenge to even the best explorers. The 1606 expedition didn’t have the best or brightest explorers. Half of the colonists on the three ships were upper class lazy people who refused to work to save their lives. “Worse, the “gentlemen” of Jamestown comprised most of the colony’s leaders, who came to revile and plot against one another as the sick and the starving were dropping dead around them.” (Price, 19) The survival of the small English outpost was thanks mostly to two extraordinary people, one a commoner named John Smith and a princess named

“Several of the warriors pulled him out and presented him to the leader of the attack: a Powhatan chief named Opechancanough, one of the three younger brothers of Powhatan himself.” (Price, 23) Around the age of sixty at the time, Opechancanough was a man with a “large stature, noble presence, and extraordinary parts.” He was third in line to succeed Chief Powahatan, and it was his decision on what to do with Smith, the captive, who faced an army without flinching. “Smith was aware that natives shared his own countrymen’s awe of rank and status.” (Price,