1. Chapter 2 The American Colonies Emerge
Section 2
An English Settlement at Jamestown

3. English Settlers Struggle in North America
English colonies were originally funded and maintained by joint-stock companies.
Several investors could pool their money in support of the colony.
They hoped to make a profit on their
investment.

4. Companies had to get official charters from the English government to start a colony.
The first charter to be granted was in 1606.
King James granted the charter for Virginia Company.

5. The Virginia Company hoped to find gold and silver in the Virginia territory.
Nearly 150 passengers arrived on the shores of Virginia in April of 1607.
The settlement was named Jamestown in honor of their king.

6. Disaster in Jamestown
From the very beginning, Jamestown colonists only wanted to search for gold….not plant crops, not fish, not build shelters…
The river water became contaminated and the colonists ran out of food.
Most of the colonists were formerly wealthy, so they would not do manual labor.
By winter 1607, only 38 colonists remained alive.

7. John Smith Saves the Day
John Smith took control of the settlement.
He persuaded the local Powhatan people to provide food.
Smith was injured later that winter and had to go back to England.

8. In the spring of 1609, 600 more colonists arrived.
The Powhatan began to kill the colonists’ livestock and destroy their farms.
By winter 1610, famine (“the starving time”) had set in.
Colonists ate roots, rats, snakes, and boiled shoe leather.
Only 60 people survived.

10. Jamestown Flourishes
Jamestown colonists began to grow tobacco (“brown gold”) in 1612.
John Rolfe experimented with a crossbred tobacco plant that could handle Virginia’s climate.
The results were highly profitable.
By 1620, colonists exported more than 1.5 million pounds of tobacco to England each year.

12. The Virginia Company began to send indentured servants to Jamestown to work the fields.
Under the headright system, anyone who paid for their own or another’s passage to Virginia received 50 acres of land.
People who could transport large numbers of immigrants could receive vast amounts of land (plantations) and became very wealthy.
Indentured servants were the people who had their passage paid for them and had to work what they owed off while under contract (usually 4-7 years).

14. Africans arrived in Virginia in 1619.
The 20 that lived in Jamestown were treated like indentured servants.
After a few years, the Africans received land and freedom.
It would be several years before the English colonists in North America began using Africans as slave labor.

15. The Settlers Clash with Native Americans

16. The English Pattern of Conquest (Anglo-Saxonism)
The English frowned on marriages between the natives and Englishmen.
They did not live among the Indians.
They did not try to learn their culture and traditions.
These practices were the complete opposite of Spain’s pattern of conquest.

18. The Settlers Battle the Native Americans
The survivors of Jamestown never forgot the Powhatan’s hostility toward them.
They demanded tribute (corn or free labor) from the local native people.
English soldiers set Indian villages on fire or kidnapped hostages to make them cooperate.
One of the kidnapped victims was Chief Powhatan’s daughter, Pocahontas.

20. After Pocahontas and John Rolfe married in 1614, there was peace between the people, but it did not last.
In 1622, Powhatan raiding parties attacked English villages up and down the James River, killing more than 300 colonists.
The Virginia Company sent more soldiers and supplies.
Eventually, King James revoked their charter and made Jamestown a royal colony.
English soldiers conquered the Powhatan.

21. Economic Differences Split Virginia
Free men in Virginia had little money to buy land, so they couldn’t vote and had no rights in colonial society.
Virginia’s poor settlers who lived on the western frontier of Virginia were being overly taxed by their governor, William Berkeley.
Those people on the western frontier were more prone to Indian attacks because they lived so far out.
None of their tax money was used for their protection.
In 1676, fighting broke out between the frontier colonists and the native population.
The governor refused to finance a war to benefit the colony’s poor.

22. Bacon’s Rebellion
Nathaniel Bacon raised an army of Virginia frontiersmen to fight the Native Americans on the Virginia frontier.
Berkeley declared Bacon’s army illegal.
Bacon marched to Jamestown to confront colonial leaders.
Some of Bacon’s army set fire to the town and Berkeley and some of the other nobles fled.
Bacon held the town until his death one month later.
Berkeley returned and put the rebellion down.