Intro

Forget the Mayflower and the Pilgrims. The first English people to establish a residence in North America were part of the Virginia Company, and they sailed here on the Susan Constant, the Discovery, and the Godspeed.

Why do we look to Jamestown? Because it is the beginning of America today- it is where a government was to be started. Moreover, it paints a picture of how while the English were trying to situate themselves in a place they knew nothing about and had no business acquiring for themselves, except for the object of business alone, they along with the Algonquians of the area shared the hardships of struggling through a drought.

Exploration of the east coast of what is today America had been going on for at least fifty years before the Virginia Company set sail. The northeast was looked at for fur trading and the southeast was attempted to be the first English settlement at Roanoke, but it failed for unknown reasons. Today Roanoke is believed to have failed due to a drought similar to but more severe than the one the people of Jamestown endured. With St. Augustine in Florida established by the Spanish in 1565, the English needed to gain land as well in order to hold itself in the new enterprises of the global economy.

The people in the Virginia Company, including John Smith, were sent with instructions to set up a fort as their post and look for “riches”, or anything that could be valuable as a trade good for the English. With the little knowledge they had of the indigenous people in the area, they brought goods such as copper scraps and beads to trade for food. What they did not know is that the drought they would suffer through would affect all living in the area, making it more difficult to gain access of food through the Algonquians. In addition, word of the way the English treated the native populations did not aid in their trade expeditions.

John Smith kept a diary of his journeys, detailing everything from day to day life and including his experiences with the chief of the Algonquians’, Powhatan. Smith’s entry about the “starving time” lets historians see how serious and dire the situation became, when the English started eating not only their horses, but some of their own people. To see the beginning of Jamestown is to see what the people were enduring from the beginning, and is why Smith’s entry from 1609 is the first order, primary document.

The second order documents include a map of the locations of Jamestown and Werowocomoco, and archaeological evidence from the starving time. The maps show how close the English resided to the Algonquians and the Algonquian capital of Werowocomoco, where Chief Powhatan lived. These maps were guides for the English and exemplify the trading that took place between the groups, at times peaceful but always strained from aggressive encounters of previous times (which will later lead to a third order document). The artifacts of animal bones (horse) and fish scales can be dated back to when not much was around to eat (i.e. Deer, rabbits and other small game, limited birds) and shows how the English had to survive the drought.

Third order documents of The New World movie from 2005, a New York Times article on tree-ring dating of the contact period, and another entry from John Smith and Chief Powhatan help support the tough times with hunger the Algonquian and English had to face, while examining whom exactly helped whom. Although the movie’s actors and producers went to Jamestown for research, does not mean they got the story right. Smith and Powhatan had civil conversations about living side by side, but both pointed out their fear of the other’s initiation of fighting. The article on dendrochronology will shed light on how serious a problem the drought really was and how it put a strain on all of those living in this part of America at that time.

From exploring the following documents one can see the environmental pressures put on the English and Algonquians, but both also had to adjust to the other in their society. Jamestown was a new beginning for the English and America, but also a new beginning, or ending, for the Algonquians.