2.2 THE JAMESTOWN COLONY

Angela Browntotallyhistory.com

LEARNING TARGETS

I Can…

1. List reasons why England was interested in exploring and colonizing the Americas.

2. Describe the English colonies of Roanoke and Jamestown, and Native American reactions to these settlements.

3. Explain the role of tobacco in Virginia and how it contributed to Bacon’s Rebellion.

VOCABULARY : P R I VAT E E R , C H A R T E R , J O I N T- S T O C K C O M PA N Y, R O YA L C O L O N Y, L E G I S L AT U R E , H O U S E O F B U R G E S S E S , I N D E N T U R E D S E R VA N T, B A C O N ’ S R E B E L L I O N

Bellringer: Why do people want to own things such as land and other forms of

property? What image does ownership convey?

ENGLISH EXPLORERS :

John Cabot: An Italian, whose original name was Giovanni Caboto,

Cabot was the first known explorer sailing for the English to cross the Atlantic.

He may have reached what is now Newfoundland, Canada, in 1497.

Cabot never returned from his second voyage to the Americas.

elizabethan-era.org.uk

MORE EXPLORERS

Sir Martin Frobisher:

He sailed 3 voyages across the Americas in 1576, 1577 & 1578.

He was searching for a trade route to Asia through North America.

The Northwest Passage exists north of Canada but is extremely hazardous and not successfully navigated until 1906.

libweb5.princeton.edu

MORE EXPLORERSJohn Davis:

He made three voyages to NA searching for the Northwest Passage in 1585, 1586, & 1587

Henry Hudson:

He explored for both the English and the Dutch.

In 1609, during his third voyage he discovered the river now known as the Hudson, in New York.

He sailed 150 miles upstream, realized it wasn’t the NW passage and turned back.

hudsonriverhistory.com

MORE EXPLORESSir Francis Drake:

English adventurers were taking their own shortcut to wealth.

Sailing as privateers, privately owned ships hired by a government to attack foreign ships, they raided Spanish treasure ships and cities in the Americas.

Elizabeth I, the Protestant queen of England from 1558 – 1603, had authorized these raids.

DRAKE CONTINUED

Drake was the most famous of Queen Elizabeth’s “sea dogs,” as the English privateers were called.

In 1586, Drake raided St. Augustine in Florida and several other Spanish port cities in the Americas.

His thefts severely weakened the finances of the Spanish empire.

As an explorer in 1577 – 1580, Drake became the first English captain to sail around the world.

en.wikipedia.org

R E A S O N S F O R E N G L I S H I N T E R E S T I N P E R M A N E N T S E T T L E M E N T I N T H E

A M E R I C A S

1. They wanted a base in the Americas from which to attack Spanish ships and cities.

2. Convinced they would find a Northwest Passage through the American continent to the Indies, they would need supply stations in NA for trading ships.

3. They wanted new markets with the NA or the colonies to buy English cloth and other products.

4. The Americas would be a good place to send those who could not find work or homes in England due to overcrowding.

THE ROANOKE DISASTER

Sir Walter Raleigh tried twice to start a colony on Roanoke Island in the 1580s.

Roanoke is one of a chain of islands called the Outer Banks that run along the coast of what is now North Carolina.

The first attempt ended in 1585, when the starving settlers abandoned the colony and returned home.

The results of the second attempt in 1587 remains a mystery.

ROANOKE MYSTERY

Its settlers seemed to have vanished.

A supply expedition from England in 1590 found only empty buildings at the settlement. On a doorpost was carved the only clue to the fate of the settlers – the word Croatoan.

Croatoan being the name of a nearby NA group.

Did the settlers join the Indians or were they defeated by them?

THE LOST COLONY

ncpedia.org

THE JAMESTOWN SETTLEMENT

In 1606, several Englishmen made plans to establish another colony.

These businessmen first had to get a charter allowing them to form a joint-stock company called the Virginia Company.

Charter – a certificate of permission from the king.

Joint-stock company – a company funded and run by a group of investors who share the company’s profits and losses.

In 1607 the Virginia Company set 100 colonists to Virginia, formerly named by Raleigh earlier.

xtimeline.com

JAMESTOWN

They started a settlement about 60 miles from the mouth of the James River, in the Chesapeake Bay region.

It was named Jamestown in honor of their King, James I.

TASK:

Write an advertisement designed to attract young English men and women to migrate to the Virginia Colony. Use Comparing Primary Sources from page 39 before deciding how best to “sell” Virginia to the English.

THE SETTLERS’ HARDSHIPS

The Jamestown Colony failed for several reasons:

1. Most of the settlers were not used to doing the hard work required to start a settlement.

• They had come to get rich quick. Goldsmith’s etc.• Some were born into wealthy families and had no

experience with manual labor• They ignored the necessary tasks and searched

for gold.en.wikipedia.orgRecreated Powhatan settlement at Jamestown

FAILURE

2. The village was little better than a swamp swarming with disease-bearing mosquitoes. Many of the settlers died of disease.

3. Leadership in the colony was poor. The squabbled about minor matters even in the face of starvation.

• In 1608, Colonist John Smith emerged as a strong leader• Smith was a brave, blunt, experienced soldier• He said, “ You must obey this now for a law, that he that will

not work shall not eat…for the labors of 30 or 40 honest and industrious men shall not be consumed to maintain a 150 idle loiterers.”

FAILURE

Smith soon left the colony because of an injury and sailed back to England.

The colony suffered starvation and sickness for the first 10 years.

From October 1609 to March 1610 was remembered as the starving time.

The settlers would have died without the food and water provided by the Native Americans.

Meanwhile in England, writers were publishing pamphlets calling Virginia a paradise.

By 1623, 5,500 settlers are had migrated. 4,000 died shortly after arriving in the colony.

GOVERNING THE COLONY

In 1609 the Virginia company received a new charter appointing a governor who would live in the colony.

Still unable to turn a profit, King James took their charter and shut it down in 1624.

Virginia became a royal colony, with a governor appointed by the king.

It also had a legislature, or lawmaking assembly beginning in 1619 made up of representatives from the colony called burgesses. The assembly came to be called the House of Burgesses.

This was the first instance of limited self-government in the English colonies.

Shortly after their arrival, the English were attacked by about 200 NA.

An English cannon forced them to retreat.

Englishmen then traveled to neighboring NA villages to make a tense, uneasy truce.

NATIVE AMERICANS

en.wikipedia.org

THE JAMESTOWN MASSACRE, 1622

The Powhatan Indians and Jamestown settlers mingled freely.

The Indians often ate and slept in the settlers houses, borrowing possessions even firearms.

At 8 o’clock on that Good Friday, Indians throughout the widely spaced settlements suddenly attacked their hosts. Others descended from the woods to slaughter and cut off escape routes. Chief Opechancanough intended to wipe out the English.

Most of the outlying settlements were destroyed.

The warning of a Christianized Indian, Chanco? name uncertain, saved the town from complete destruction. 347 died.

SETTLERS DEFENDING

ushistoryimages.com

NATIVE AMERICANS REACT

The settlers stuck back within days killing as many or more NA.

An uneasy truce was patched up.

Their last major attack on the English in the Chesapeake occurred in 1644.

Opechancanough participated at age 70.

The attack failed and he was shot in the streets of Jamestown.

GROWING TOBACCOTobacco saved the Virginia colonist from failure.

Tobacco is a plant native to the Western Hemisphere but was unknown in Europe.

In 1616, John Rolfe shipped some tobacco to Europe. It quickly became popular.

By 1640, Virginia and Maryland were shipping 3 million pounds a year to Europe.

Settlers had to move out of Jamestown and form plantations on the banks of the James, York, Rappahannock and Potomac rivers and along the Chesapeake bay.

They could then grow and transport their tobacco more easily.

CASHING INhistory.howstuffworks.com

THE PROMISE OF LAND

Laborers were needed to grow large tobacco crops in Virginia.

The headright system developed giving each “head” of the family the right to 50 acres of land in entice them to come to Virginia.

English landowners forced farmers off their rented land and turned fields into pastures to raise livestock and make more money.

England was swarming with young people in search of food and work.

They were called “masterless” men and women because they did not have a master, or patron.

INDENTURED SERVANTSTo pay for the crossing to Virginia, masterless people became indentured servants.

They would work for a master for usually seven years, under a contract called an indenture.

The master paid the cost of their voyage and gave them food and shelter.

Some indentures promised a piece of land to the servant at the end of the indenture. Others gave the servant’s headright to the master.

SH

lindagailwestrich.ipage.com

What do you see happening in this photo?

Between 100,000 to 150,000 servants came to work in the 1600s.

Most were 18-22 years old, unmarried and poor.

Few lived long enough to claim their land due to the hot climate and disease.

SERVANTS AND SLAVES

The first group of about 20 Africans arrived in Virginia in 1619.

There numbers remained small due to their high cost and high deathrates.

BACON’S REBELLION

Settlers pushed farther west in search of new farmland.

Former indentured servants lacking the money to buy farmland tried to take it from the Indians instead.

Clashes resulted.

In 1676, planter Nathaniel Bacon, raised an army to fight the NA.

Governor William Berkeley, angry that Bacon was acting without his permission, declared him a rebel and gathered an army to stop him.

Bacon turned his army around.

NATHANIEL BACON

Bacon complained that Berkeley had• Failed to protect the western settlers• And that they had to little voice in colonial government

Bacon and his supporters attacked and burned Jamestown.

Bacon control nearly all of Virginia for a time.

He died suddenly, probably of illness, and the Rebellion crumbled.

The Rebellion showed frontier settlers were frustrated with a government only interested in the wealthy planters and the poorer colonists were unwilling to tolerate such a government.epicworldhistory.blogspot.com

EXIT SLIP

1. Summarizing Main Idea: Describe the challenges the English faced in settling Virginia.

2. Identifying Central Issues: North America was a difficult, dangerous place for both the Spanish and the English. Why did they want to settle there?

3. Persuasive Writing: Write a paragraph from the point of view of Nathaniel Bacon, arguing that the government in Virginia should protect western planters from NA attacks.