V.                 Conclusion

Sample Short Essay

Question: What were the main factors that most threatened the Jamestown colony? Justify your responses.

Settling the vast New World would require more than just the motivators of gold, glory, and God.  England, anxious to emulate Spain in acquiring newfound fortunes, sent three small ships carrying one hundred and forty four men to the coast of North America to settle.  Lack of women, lack of men with skills suitable for taming a wilderness, and a long drought would impede the settlement’s success.  However, while they might have surmounted these difficulties, the men that disembarked in Jamestown in 1607 were not prepared to tackle the truly fatal problems that would plague them: famine, disease, and the local Indians.

Famine was perhaps their greatest obstacle.  Settlers, expecting a two-month journey across the open seas were dismayed when the actual trip lasted over four months. This journey left them with virtually no provisions for the harsh winter months ahead.  John Smith writes in his account, Starving Time in Virginia, “…the kettle that be allowed to be equally distributed, a half a pint of wheat and as much barley boiled with water for a man a day, and this having lied some twenty six weeks in the ship’s hold, contained as many worms as grains." The putrid condition of what little food there was even led some to cannibalism.  These horrid conditions also caused disease to spread rapidly through the remaining settlers.

The very location of this colony played against the settlers and increased their exposure to disease.  Located in a swampy area, malaria ran rampant as well as dysentery and pneumonia.  Richard Frethome, in a letter to his parents wrote,"This is to let you understand that I your child am in a most heavy case by reason of the country, is such that causes much sickness, as the scurvy and the bloody flux and diverse other diseases, which maketh the body very poor and weak." Richard begged his father to send some food and ends with, "Good father, do not forget me but have mercy and pity on my miserable case: the answer of this letter will be life or death to me." Hopefully Richard received the answer to his letter that he desired, but for many it was all ready too late.  Even with additional settlers and supplies sent from England, only sixty out of five hundred settlers remained alive just two years after their colonization of Jamestown.  Adding to their already desperate state were the frequent altercations with the local Indians.

Early on, the local Algonquian Indians tried to discourage the settlers from staying on their land by frequent raids on the settlement.  They took all of the supplies they could get their hands on and killed settlers who were in their way.  This ended, for the most part, when Captain John Smith befriended the powerful chief, Powhatan, thanks to the kindness of his daughter, Pocahontas.  Relative peace followed for the next eight years with only sporadic attacks by individual tribes.  Unexpectedly, the Algonquians broke the peace in 1622 when they attacked some of the settlements around Jamestown, killing over three hundred men.  Again, in 1644, they attacked outlying settlements, killing over five hundred settlers.  These uprisings and conflicts continued to escalate as these two totally diverse peoples tried to live together.  The Indians lived in harmony with nature, believing that they were not owners of this land, but caretakers.  Europeans, on the other hand, had become accustomed to conquering, controlling, and possessing the land.  Peaceful cohabitation of these two cultures was impossible from the start.

The Jamestown settlement suffered one dreadful threat after another.  Famine ravaged the early settlers. Their supplies depleted from the long voyage and the settlers’ inability to plant before the onset of winter claimed the lives of many men.  Others, already weakened from the lack of food, succumbed quickly to diseases such as malaria, dysentery, and pneumonia, which spread rapidly through this area.  Over the next twenty-year period the local Indians frequently attacked those few who remained alive.  The struggle to survive against these insurmountable odds proved almost impossible for the tiny colony.  The desire for gold, glory and to do the work of God may have brought the Virginia settlers to the New World, but planning, provisions, and principles would be required to keep them there.