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Everyday life in colonial america
Everyday life in colonial america
Everyday life in colonial america
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Many Jamestown Settlers Died Jamestown early 1600s and everyone’s dying so they keep sending more and more people and more and more people keep dying. The english settlers settled in Jamestown, Virginia Chesapeake Bay in the early 1600’s to trade and get gold. Some of the deaths of the colonists were due to the Brackish waters, poor settler skills, and Native Americans
. The water and amount of rainfall was one reason why many people died in Jamestown. They were having serious droughts how the archeologist know this is that the rings in trees are smaller when they have a drought (DocB) so without rainfall the land was dying so they couldn’t grow any crops. Also, the water was very dirty and festered, because they dumped their wastes into the river then, the tide would bring it out then bring it back into them and they would use the water, so they would get diseases from drinking the water (DocA). Another reason is they got salt water poisoning from drinking the river water, because the salt water from the ocean the mixed in with there water making it brackish, so it would end up poisoning them(DocM). The water was a reason why many of them died.
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They had more than half of the settlers who were gentlemen or aristocrats and they didn’t do any work at the fort(DocC) so, that started to impact the lives of the colonists. A lot of people that they sent to Jamestown had no occupations at all so that makes even more people who do no work there (DocC) which sends them downhill even more. They had workers who didn’t have very important jobs like making wigs, Taylor’s and Jeweler’s. they could have sent more Carpenters and Labourers(DocC). With all of the people with useless jobs it affected them
Against all Odds is a very interesting Documentary that follows the early settlement of Jamestown in the 17th century .With endless against the odds situations thrown out in from of the people of Jamestown left and right things seemed bleak. But a lot of perseverance from the early settlers including the Documentaries depiction of the original leader John Smith things seemed to resolve themselves. In Documentary there were several parts where it conceited with what is in chapter three of the Textbook the American Promise. For example, In the Documentary when the subject of the Tobacco business came up it was exampled in the same way as the first page of chapter three. With examples of how the product was grown and distributed out into the world. Making it a very valuable trade to be doing although very labor intensive, which is why it would soon lead into the slave trade. Something that was briefly shown in the documentary mainly to show what lengths the people of Jamestown were willing to go to make things work out in their new home.
Pocahontas Powhatan Opechancanough, tells the story of the interactions between the Jamestown settlers and the Powhatan Indians, and how the European arrival changed the lives of the natives. the book focuses on the three Indians it is titled for and tries to explain the story of Jamestown through a less Anglo-biased view. At many times the book contradicts the story most people know of the Jamestown settlement and the major players involved. Throughout the book, author Helen Rountree goes to great lengths to tell the whole story truthfully, and when she can't give the whole story she makes it clear as to what is accepted to be true.
In her work, Apathy and Death in Early Jamestown, Karen Ordahl Kupperman argues that the “high mortality rate” of Jamestown was caused by apathy, which formed from “a combination of psychological and physical factors” of disease, malnutrition, and despair. She supports her argument by making parallel connections between the source of death of those at Jamestown to the deaths of American prisoners of war in World War II and the Korean War. Although her claims are interesting to read due to the engaging comparisons she makes to the death rates in Jamestown, her analogy between prisoners of war and colonists is weak due to the two vastly different situation that the people of both times went through.
The Virginia Company was granted a charter by King James the 1st to travel to North America mainly to find gold; but also to engage in “glassblowing, silk raising, winemaking and exploring the rivers” (C&G 28) in addition to trying to find a water route to the Orient ("History of Jamestown"). The company neglected to take into account that farming would be a necessary requirement. In choosing who to send on the expedition, gentlemen from the upper class were selected along with a small group of artisans, craftsmen and laborers (C&G 27). This was one of many mistakes that paved the road on the way to the eventual failure of the venture; the people selected were ill-equipped to deal with the elements and hardships they faced upon their arrival. The leaders were unaccustomed to hard work and lacked the organizational skills required to survive and thrive in the new environment. They also lacked the diplomatic skills required to deal with the Powhatan Native American’s they encountered. Faced with the very real possibility of losing their lands and facing the potential extinction of their peo...
For example, in Document A, it states “Fish are present in local streams, but only in the spring and early summer are they there in impressive abundance”. This means that there was only lots of food limited times per year and there would not have been much food in fall and winter time. Also, they had just experienced failure of a colony nearby who all of the colonists of Roanoke Island mysteriously disappeared. This could have had an affect on the number of people who died because they might not have been ready to build another colony and might have benefited from waiting a few more years to build a new colony. Disease would spread quickly among all of the colonists. This is because Jamestown was not huge meaning that if one person or a few people had a disease of illness, it would spread around quickly.
In Document C, there is a chart that lists all the jobs that the settlers had. They appeared to be prepared, they had every job needed, except for farmers, doctors, and soldiers of course. These 3 jobs could have saved so many lives, such how the farmers that knew how to grow food, unlike gentlemen who had no experience with crops. Another important job that they forgot about was doctors, doctors could have saved lives by treating sick people, but the colonists did not bring a doctor(s), they brought one surgeon, just one. Surgeons are not used to treating diseases, they cut people open, and they treat conditions related to that. Soldiers might also not have been needed, if they had good relations with the Natives, but soldiers could have helped defend the colonists, not gentlemen.
The harsh conditions of the Chesapeake colonies indiscriminately killed anyone who lived there. According to Taylor, “Despite the importation of fifteen thousand indentured servants between 1625 and 1640, Virginias population increased by only seven thousand…the extremes of the Chesapeake environment shocked English bodies...”
In 1916 America’s first settlement began to increase their population number, but not in a way you might expect. Jamestown
They were unprepared for life in the wilderness. Most had the impression that everything would be easy in the new world. The men and boys who first settled in Jamestown were townsmen and gentlemen. “They had come expecting to find gold, friendly Indians, and easy living.” (America: A Narrative History, 57) This information was given to them before making the journey to the new world. The settles were also told they would be provided with everything they would need, but supplies from England were undependable. When they arrived there was no town or any shelter waiting for them. They had to learn how to hunt and grow their own food, which they were not use to or even knew how to do in this untamed world. Captain John Smith took charge of the colony ensuring that of the 38 original survivors had to pull their own weight. He used various means to archive his goals and through his efforts Jamestown pulled through. After a period called the “Starving Time,” (America: A Narrative History, 60), where most of the colonist died, a man named John Rolfe provided a way for the colony to survive. He was able to acquire tobacco seeds from the Spanish and with it he made the colony a source of trade (America: A Narrative History, 61). Tobacco and other grown good where used to improve the lives of the colonies, but their daily lives were still very harsh as they were
This was shown in an adapted text from “The Lost Colony and Jamestown Droughts,” Science, in April 24, 1998. The chart shows how the colonists died because of the lack of water. The drought levels were very low in many times of the year. The droughts would cause a lack of crops as well in that time period. This meant that the colonists were dying even more due to the fact that the droughts would allow less time for the crops to grow. Not only were they kept down by this, they also struggled to keep themselves in a good working condition due to the fact that the first few colonists were just poor people who wanted a new life. These servants wanted to pay off a debt to their debtors and wanted a new life for themselves. But, they were completely unprepared for the swampy environment that would prove to be very unfruitful for harvesting and growing crops. When the colonists finally established a firm tobacco crop trade with the mainland, their colony had grown a lot smaller than it had before. Their colony was on the brink of extinction. In addition, according to Document A by Dennis B. Blanton of the William and Mary College, the colonists threw their own waste in the water source, expecting it to wash away and be gone. But, the water did not do that, and the waste, which proved to be too dense, stayed in the water and “tended to fester rather than flush away.” This proved
The tides made it hard for salt water not to go into their fresh drinking water. But many times the tides made salt water go into their fresh water. The colonists would dump their waste into the salt water because no one drank it or used it. When the time came and they had to drink the nasty waste water they began to get diseases from the water according to document A. They were not immune to the diseases and they did not have the right medication. Drinking the water would cause them to get diseases and then they would eventually die. Since the water had waste in it, it probably killed a lot of the fish that were in the water. This cut down their food supply and their drinking supply. Another reason the colonists died was because of their relationship with the Indians. In document E it shows a list of the day, year and how many and how the colonists died. As the years went by there were more people dying from the Indians attacking them. In 1607 the colonist relationship was not the best, but it was not the worst. Between 1609 and 1610 their relationship hit rock bottom and the Indian attacks got worse document E shows. They needed that relationship to be strong so they could keep trading with the Indians. But since their relationship was bad winter would be a hard time without an alliance with the Indians to help them survive
Diseases, something that cannot be seen wiped out majority of the colonists. The brackish water was one that caused many death, with the heat high in the summer, the colonists were force to drink brackish water or perish. Many became sick and experience a slow death of dehydration. (Movie). Death was a common word seen in Jamestown, just as Smith had reported, there are “many dead, [and] some sick”. (Doc. E). Many have died, “kills some 110 colonists form famine and disease…” (Doc. E). More and more die, this is what I see from this, from 100s imported in, to 100s being buried in graves. The environment have set up these conditions for the colonists to overcome, but death is the only solution they have to
It was a difficult life for the first colonists; they had limited labor and were constantly raided by Native Americans. Colonists tried to use the Native Americans as a source of slavery. Most of the colonist’s farms were in forest areas so Native Americans would just leave in to the woods. Colonists were afraid of pressuring them from the fear of getting ambushed by gangs of Native Americans. Another reason Native American men made bad slaves was because the women in the tribes did the agricultural work in the Native American villages.
The Chesapeake region of the colonies included Virginia, Maryland, the New Jerseys (both East and West) and Pennsylvania. In 1607, Jamestown, the first English colony in the New World (that is, the first to thrive and prosper), was founded by a group of 104 settlers to a peninsula along the James River. These settlers hoped to find gold, silver, a northwest passage to Asia, a cure for syphilis, or any other valuables they might take back to Europe and make a profit. Lead by Captain John Smith, who "outmaneuvered other members of the colony's ruling and took ruthlessly took charge" (Liberty Equality Power, p. 57), a few lucky members of the original voyage survived. These survivors turned to the local Powhatan Indians, who taught them the process of corn- and tobacco-growing. These staple-crops flourished throughout all five of these colonies.
The English had two main colonies in the new world, Jamestown and Plymouth. The first colony was Jamestown, established in Virginia in 1607. Jamestown was settled by Captain John Smith, and was named after King James I. Tobacco was the main export of Jamestown, and became the basis of the Jamestown economy, sending more than 50,000 lbs of the plan back to Europe by 1618 (textbook 46). Jamestown had a very rocky start, many colonists dying in the first few years of the settlement, and the settlers had many problems with natives. Shortly after the arrival of English colonists the Natives attacked them, and were finally forced back by a canon from the English. A very uneasy truce was finally settled between the natives, called the Powhatans, and the English (textbook 44-5). Economic growth and expanding their territories were the main priorities of the English in the Jamestown colonies.