Early Jamestown: Why Did so Many Colonist Die?

507 Words3 Pages
Early Jamestown: Why did So Many colonist Die? Have you ever heard of the colony “Early Jamestown?” If you never heard of the colony or you don’t really know anything about it, then here’s some background information. In May 1607, roughly 110 English men arrived on the coast of Virginia. It was to be the first permanent English colony in what is now the United States. The first couple of years were not easy for the settlers. The question is Why did so many colonist die? To start off with, one of the problems they faced was environmental problems. Many of Jamestown’s colonist died because of brackish water which was some salty water due to the mixture of fresh and salt water, because of the tides that would happen twice daily. Also, they would dump their human waste into the water and make it even more contaminated so when the people of Jamestown would drink or use the water it would make them ill and even to the point that they died. Within a couple of years they also faced drought which many people died because of starvation. The colony went to desperate measures by forcing the Indians to trade their grain, the Indians didn’t give up easy though as it says in the document ‘some harshe (harsh) and cruwell (cruel ) dealinge (dealings)by cutting of towe (two) of the salvages (Indians) heads and other extremities.” Another reason why the colonist died in the colony of early Jamestown was because of the skills they had. When the first ship arrived in Jamestown they brought over a total of 110 males in 1607. 47 of the men were gentlemen, back then, a gentlemen was a person of wealth who was not used to working with his hands. So the 47 men didn’t help find resources nor did they help build any structures so the people among Jamestown had to defend for the gentlemen. With the first boat load nearly 70 were dead by December, because they didn’t have

More about Early Jamestown: Why Did so Many Colonist Die?

Open Document