Essay On Early Jamestown

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Nyemba Bryant Mrs. Hepp Honors Civics 1st hour February 13, 2014 Early Jamestown: Why Did So Many Colonists Die? The Jamestown colony was founded in 1607 and is often acknowledged as the oldest permanent North American settlement. But by 1611, the colony did not look like it would survive because by then 400 of the first 500 colonists were dead. In Early Jamestown many colonists deaths were attributed to their location, lack of survival skills, and bad relations with the natives. Jamestown’s first major error that resulted in countless colonists’ deaths was their location. The Jamestown colony was located on an island. (Doc A) The island bordered the James River that was full of brackish water. Brackish water is a mixture of salt water from an ocean and fresh water from a river that often causes dehydration and disease. In the very first summer, half of the colonists perished due to illness. (Doc E) Because of the lack of clean fresh water there were very few animals that lived on the island, which made hunting increasingly difficult for the colonists. It was also shown that this ...

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