2.2 THE JAMESTOWN
COLONY
Angela Brown
totallyhistory.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.
Bellringer: Why do people want to own things such as land and
other forms of property? What image does ownership convey?
V O C A B U L A R Y : 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
REBELLION
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
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 EXPLORERS
MORE EXPLORERS
John 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 in was the the NW passage and turned
back.
hudsonriverhistory.com
MORE EXPLORES
Sir 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
REASONS FOR ENGLISH INTEREST IN
PERMANENT SETTLEMENT IN THE AMERICAS
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 MY STERY
 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.org
Recreated Powhatan settlement at Jamestown
FAILURE
2. The village was little better than a swamp swarming with diseasebearing 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.
NATIVE AMERICANS
 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.
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 TOBACCO
 Tobacco 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.
CASHING IN
history.howstuffworks.com
 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.
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 SERVANTS
 To 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.
What do you see happening in this photo?
SH
lindagailwestrich.ipage.com
SERVANTS AND SLAVES
 Between 100,000 to 150,000
 The first group of about 20
servants came to work in the
Africans arrived in Virginia in
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.
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.