Jamestown, First English Town
In 1607 Englishmen Established a Permanent Settlement
Four hundred years ago this year, Jamestown was established as the first permanent English settlement in North America.
With the failure of the settlements sponsored by Sir Walter Raleigh at Roanoke, and the death of his patron, the Virgin Queen for whom Virginia was named, Elizabeth I, English interest in establishing a foothold in the New World lagged somewhat. But in just over a decade dreams of gold, pearls, and other riches inspired a group of entrepreneurs to request a charter for The Virginia Company from King James I. This charter was granted in June of 1606, and in December an expedition set sail for America. Over half of the 108 settlers were "Gentlemen", and their stated goal was to find gold and a passage to the Orient. There were no women included in any of the early parties sent to America by the Virginia Company. The fabled "Northwest Passage" inspired many expeditions, and the effort to find it never met with success since such a passage does not exist. But, in 1606 it seemed a dream well worth pursuing.
Landing at Jamestown in May of 1607 the settlers almost immediately came into conflict with the Algonquin natives, but managed to establish friendly relations based on the trade of copper and iron items with the Powhatan tribe. The hostilities led to hasty construction of a triangular palisade encompassing a church, a storehouse, a few houses, and several other buildings. It was built in a place thought to be safe from a feared Spanish sea attack with cannon, but Spanish power was lagging and such an attack never came.
Setting out to explore and prospect for gold, and not finding either gold or a passage to the East many of the settlers began to become disheartened, but the leadership of John Smith held them together for a time. Just before winter in 1609 Smith set sail to try and bring supplies from England. That winter would become known as "the starving time,” and many died from lack of food. Those who survived lived on anything they could get including rats and boiled shoe leather. Towards the end of the winter those who remained alive gave up hope and buried their cannon and breastplates in preparation for abandoning the settlement, but supplies and new settlers arrived just as they were preparing to leave.
Not long after that, a man named John Rolfe sailed south to the Caribbean, and brought back tobacco seed of the Orinoco variety which grew a good three feet taller and had better flavor than the native tobacco grown by the local Indians. The arrival and successful cultivation of this cash crop (which was in high demand by the European nobility for their very fashionable snuff habits) signaled the beginning of prosperity for Jamestown, and tobacco became the foundation of the prosperity of Virginia for the next 200 years. Rolfe then married an "Indian princess" named Pocahontus, the daughter of the chief Powhatan. She would eventually travel with him to England, only to die of disease during the visit. Despite her legendary beauty, many reports from London at the time of her visit find her rather homely although interesting and lively in conversation.
Writing from Virginia 400 years after the founding of Jamestown it is difficult to imagine the wilderness that was once here, or the days when there were no white women in Virginia. Women were eventually brought, and at the time a female convict from England was a highly prized wife for a successful tobacco grower. Things have changed a great deal both in Virginia and the world since 1607, but the scenery is always beautiful, and except in July and August, the climate is pleasant. When one remembers that crossing the Atlantic from the east in this period with favorable winds meant striking the coast of America from the south, and that they arrived in May, it is easy to see why they chose this place for their settlement. The Virginia Company never made a profit and in the 1620s Virginia became a crown colony under the King, but early attempts at civil government at Jamestown mark the first representative government in America, and Jamestown remained the capitol of Virginia until the end of the 17th century.
