February 23, 2012

Unit 4 - The Starving Time

Unit Four – The Starving Time

When Captain John Smith went back to England, in 1609, there were nearly five hundred Europeans in Virginia. But the settlers soon got into trouble with the Indians, who would hide in the woods and killed every one that ventured out.

There was no longer any chance to buy corn from the Indians and so all the food was soon gone.

The starving colonists ate the hogs, the dogs, and the horses, even to their skins. Then they ate rats, mice, snakes, toadstools, and whatever they could get that might stop their hunger.

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A dead Indian was eventually eaten, and, as their hunger grew more extreme, they were forced to consume their own dead. Starving men wandered off into the woods and died there, and when their companions, found them, they devoured them as hungry wild beasts might have done.

This was always afterward remembered as "the starving time."

Virginia

Along with the people who came at the close of John Smith's time, there had been sent another shipload of people, with Sir Thomas Gates, a new governor for the colony. This vessel had been shipwrecked, but Gates and his people had got ashore on the Bermuda Islands.

These islands had no inhabitants at that time. Here these shipwrecked people lived well on wild hogs. When spring came they built two little vessels of the cedar trees which grew on the island. These they rigged with sails taken from their wrecked ships, and getting their people aboard they made their way back on course to Jamestown. When they got there they found alive but sixty of the four hundred and ninety people left in Virginia. These last sixty would all been dead in ten days or less, had Gates not shown up. Unfortunately the food that Gates brought would barely last them 16 days.

A decision was made to put Jamestown people aboard his little cedar ships and sail to Newfoundland in hope finding other English vessels that could help them.

He set sail down the river, leaving not one English settler on the whole continent of America, but before Gates and his people got out of the James River they met a long boat rowing up toward them.

Lord De la Warr had been appointed governor of Virginia, and sent out from England. From some men at the mouth of the river he had learned that Gates and all the people were coming down. He sent his long boat to turn them back again. On a Sunday morning De la Warr landed in Jamestown and knelt on the ground a while in prayer. Then he went to the little church, where he took possession of the government, and scolded the people for being lazy and bringing such suffering upon themselves.

During this summer of 1610, a hundred and fifty of the settlers died, and Lord De la Warr, became very sick and left the colony. The next year Sir Thomas Dale took charge, and Virginia was under his government and that of Sir Thomas Gates for five years afterward.

Dale was a soldier and ruled with an iron fist. He forced the idle settlers to work endlessly and he drove away some of the Indians, settled some new towns, and built fortifications. But he was so harsh that the people hated him.

He punished men by beating them and then making them work for years in irons. Those who rebelled or ran away were put to death in cruel ways; some were burned alive, others were broken on “the wheel” (a cruel torture device), and one man, for merely stealing food, was starved to death.

Virginia

Powhatan, the head chief of the neighboring tribes, gave the colony a great deal of trouble during the first part of Dale's time. His daughter, Pocahontas, who, as a child, had often played with the boys of Jamestown, and had shown herself friendly to Captain Smith and others in their trips among the Indians, was now grown woman.

While she was visiting a chief named Japazaws, an English captain named Argall hired that chief to hand her over to him and he took her captive to Jamestown. Here a European by the name of John Rolfe married her, after she had received Christian baptism. This marriage brought about a peace between Powhatan and the English settlers in Virginia.

When Dale went back to England in 1616 he took with him some of the Indians. Pocahontas, who was now called "the Lady Rebecca," and her husband went to England with Dale. Pocahontas was called a "princess" in England, and received much attention. But she died when about to start back to the colony, leaving a little son.

The same John Rolfe who married Pocahontas became the first Englishman to raise tobacco in Virginia in 1612. Tobacco brought a large price in that day and it helped to make the colony successful.

By in 1616 there were only three hundred and fifty English people in all North America.