Early Jamestown Settlement Research Paper

England had sent 144 people to settle in the Americas, in what is now known as Virginia. The 144 people that were on those ships were either gentlemen or commoners. The gentlemen and commoners did not get along. The commoners did all the hard labor while the gentlemen lounged around. This created tension between the two different groups of people. The settlement of Jamestown was set back on a peninsula along the James River. The settlement was set far enough away from the ocean that the Spanish could not see them. They expected the Indians to welcome them. Since they were so blinded by their fear of the Spanish, they did not see that their real enemy was the Indians. The Indians started picking off the settlers one by one. This drove the settlers to build a fort. They trapped themselves in the fort for protection, they wouldn’t dare to go out, they were starting to starve. Doing this resulted in them trying to trade with the Indians. They traded jewels for food. The chief of the Powhatan, at first did not want to trade with them. His daughter, Pocahontas, persuaded him against that.The food did not last them very long. The British empire started to bring more and more settlers over. They again tried to trade with the Indians. This time instead of jewels the Indians wanted weapons, this the settlers knew …show more content…
They went to the river and drank the brackish water. They drank so much of that bad water that some of the settlers got a disease called saltwater poisoning. This led to a lot of the settlers dying. On top of the that, some of the settlers grew suspicious that there were Spanish spies in the midst of them. They shot able-bodied men, just because of a suspicion. This lead to much more deadly. They had fewer people to hold down the fort and even less to plow the fields. The Powhatan took siege over the settlement. Even though the settlers won only 50 of them

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