Unit 2: Colonial America
Chapter 3: Founding the English
Mainland Colonies 1585-1732
Why Migrate to America?
England’s First Attempt at
Colonization - Roanoke
 Sir Walter Raleigh Roanoke Island (1585, then
1587) off the coast of NC
 Settlement failed for
unknown reasons
Four Distinct Regions
Settling the Chesapeake – VA & MD
 Joint-stock companies were
used to finance trips to the
New World
 Purpose - make money
 Plymouth Company - failed
 Virginia Company (London
Company)
Virginia
Jamestown - The First Settlement
 Three ships set sail from England Dec. 1606
 Settled at Jamestown (in honor of King James I) on May
24, 1607
Jamestown – The First Settlement
Jamestown - The First Settlement
 Easy to defend but mosquito-infested & very
unhealthy
 Settlers died by the dozens from disease,
malnutrition, & starvation
 Spent time looking for gold instead of hunting or
farming
Jamestown – High Mortality Rates
 The “Starving Time”
1607: 104 colonists
By spring, 1608: 38 survived
1609: 300 more immigrants
By spring, 1610: 60 survived
1610 – 1624: 10,000
immigrants
1624 population: 1,200
Adult life expectancy: 40 years
Death of children before age 5: 80%
Jamestown - The First Settlement
 Captain John Smith took over the
settlement in 1608 & helped
make it successful
 “no work, no food” policy
 Discipline & order collapsed
after he left in 1609
The Powhatan Confederacy
 Dominated small
tribes in the James
River area when the
English arrived
The Powhatan Confederacy
 Two groups cooperated at first, but the English
exhibited a sense of superiority & entitlement that
alienated the confederacy
 Relations grew worse - English raided Indian food
supplies during the starving times
War in the Chesapeake
 1610-1614 - First Anglo-Powhatan War
 1614-1622 - Peace
 1622-1644 - Periodic attacks between Indians &
settlers
War in the Chesapeake
 Powhatan Uprising of 1622
 Indians attacked the English, killing 347
 1644-1646 - Second Anglo-Powhatan War
 Last effort of natives to defeat the English
 Indians defeated again
War in the Chesapeake
 Peace Treaty of 1646
 Removed the Powhatans from their original land
 Formally separated the Indian & English
settlement areas
 English considered the Powhatan peoples extinct by
1685
Tobacco
 Tobacco saved the colony!
 Englishmen were a steady
market for this “brown gold”
Tobacco
 Young planter named John
Rolfe transplanted a milder
strain of West Indies tobacco
to the colony (1612)
Tobacco
 1618 — Virginia produces 20,000 pounds of
tobacco.
 1622 — Despite losing nearly one-third of
its colonists in an Indian attack,
Virginia produces 60,000 pounds of
tobacco.
 1627 — Virginia produces
500,000 pounds
of tobacco.
 1629 — Virginia produces
1,500,000 pounds
of tobacco.
Tobacco
 Played a vital role to putting VA on firm, economic
footing
 Lives revolved around tobacco
 Quickly exhausted the soil
 Growing tobacco required much land, thereby
promoting the plantation system
 Increased demand for more land & cheap labor
Indentured Servitude
 V.C. set up the head right system
 Granted each male colonist 50
acres of land for each settler he
brought to VA
 Poor immigrants came to the New
World & worked for several years
Indentured Servitude
 Indenture Contract
 4-7 years
 Promised “freedom dues”
 Forbidden to marry
 Life was short & brutal
Frustrated Freemen - Bacon’s Rebellion
 Late 1600s - large number of young, poor,
discontented men in the Chesapeake area
 Little access to land
 Few women to marry
 1670 The Virginia Assembly disenfranchised most
landless men
Frustrated Freemen - Bacon’s Rebellion
 1676 - 1,000 Virginians, led by
planter Nathaniel Bacon, revolted
 Gov. of VA, William Berkeley,
wouldn’t do anything about the
Indian attacks on frontier
settlements
 Berkeley monopolized the fur
trade with the Indians
Nathaniel
Bacon
Governor
William
Berkeley
Frustrated Freemen - Bacon’s Rebellion
 Rebels attacked Indians, drove Berkeley from Jamestown,
& burned the capital
 Bacon suddenly died of disease & Berkeley put down the
rebellion
Frustrated Freemen - Bacon’s Rebellion
 Results
 Exposed the unhappiness of landless former
servants
 Pitted poor, backcountry frontiersmen against
the plantation owners (gentry)
 Planters searched for laborers less likely to rebel
- black slaves!
House of Burgesses
 Small measure of self-govt.
began in 1619 with the first
meeting of the House of
Burgesses
 Royal Governor appointed a
council consisting of 6
leading planters
 15 members were elected
by the colony
House of Burgesses
 1624 James I revoked the charter of the bankrupt V.C.
 VA became a royal colony under the king’s direct
control
 Powers of the H of B were restricted