Jamestown Fiasco Essay

620 Words3 Pages
The Jamestown fiasco began April of 1607 and concluded around 1617. Over these ten years the colonist of Jamestown endured numerous problems and also passed up numerous solutions as well. The settlers of Jamestown had to endure many troubles during the first decade of their settlement. Edmunds. Morgan, states, in his interpretation of the Fiasco, “for the next ten years they seem to have made nearly every possible mistake and some that seem almost impossible.” (pg.63) I concur with Mr. Morgan’s statement. The first decade in the settlement was real rough for the colonist. For example, they landed in 1607, by the winter of 1609 almost half a grand of people living in the settlement where starving to death. “There are five hundred people in the colony now. And they are starving.” (pg.63) The colonies were forced to cannibalism. “One provident man chops up his wife and salts down the pieces. Others dig up graves to eat the corpses.” (pg.63) there was absolutely no means of food for the colonies this winter. They surly had no common sense; I mean really, how do you let almost your entire civilization die off? Could they not have planted their own food or hunted some game? In other scenes, some English men would go on to destroy crops planted by the Native Americans, and then kill Native Americans in sight. Morgan addresses this tragedy, “it is the spring of 1612…it is not easy to make sense of the behavior displayed in these episodes. How to explain the suicidal impulse that led the hungry Englishmen to destroy the corn that might have fed them and to commit atrocities upon the people who grew it?” (pg.64) Could not have said it better myself, in an impulsive outrage of pure jealousy and anger, these men single handedly destroyed there very best life support system. Moving forward, Powhatan the chief of the local Native American tribe had a great impact upon
Open Document