1. Title: The English Settle in the Chesapeake

2. England’s first attempt to settle North America came a year prior to its victory over Spain, in 1587, when Sir Walter Raleigh sponsored a settlement on Roanoke Island (now part of North Carolina).
By 1590, the colony had disappeared, which is why it came to be known as the Lost Colony
Queen Elizabeth I authorized Raleigh to plant a colony. After two preliminary expeditions, he sends 117 colonists to the territory he named Virginia, after Elizabeth, the “Virgin Queen.”
There, they establish a settlement on Roanoke Island. However, three years later, a re-supply ship from England was sent to them, but they found the island deserted. The colonists had vanished, leaving only the word Croatoan (the name of a nearby island) carved on a tree. The disappearance of the colony still remains a mystery.
However, historians did a tree ring study and found that a severe drought occurred , which would have created a subsistence crises for the settlers and which could have led them to abandon the Roanoke site.

3. The English tried again to establish a colony in 1606
The English tried again to establish a colony in They called it Jamestown.
Jamestown was funded by a joint-stock company
Joint-stock company = A group of investors who bought the right to establish New World plantations from King James I.
The company was called the Virginia Company, from which the area around Jamestown took its name.
The initial impulse that led to England’s first permanent Western Hemisphere colony (that’s Jamestown) was from a group of merchants and wealthy gentry.
They got a charter from King James I.
These men established the Virginia Company.

4. Identify Roanoke Island
Identify Jamestown
In 1607, 104 men and boys sail to a region near Chesapeake Bay called Tsenacomoco by its native inhabitants. There, they constructed small houses and a Church of England.

5. The settlers, many of them English gentlemen, were ill-suited to the many adjustments life in the New World required of them
The colony only survived because Captain John Smith imposed harsh martial law.
His motto was, “He who will not work shall not eat.”
Things got so bad for the colonists that during the starving time (1609 and 1610), some resorted to cannibalism, while others abandoned the settlement to join Indian tribes
Many of these first immigrants were gentlemen unaccustomed to working with their hands. They resisted hard labor, attempted to maintain traditional social hierarchies, and retained elaborate English dress and casual work habits despite their desperate circumstances.
It was only until John Smith, one of the colony’s lower-status founders, imposed military discipline on the colonists in 1608 did Jamestown save itself from collapse.
The winter of is known as the “starving time”

6. The colony would have perished without the help of a group of local tribes called the Powhatan Confederacy, who taught the English what crops to plant and how to plant them.
In 1614, Pocahontas, the daughter of the chief, married planter John Rolfe, which helped ease tension between the natives and the settlers.
Jamestown owed its survival to the Indians of Tsenacomoco, a group of six Alogonquian villages known as the Powhatan Confederacy.
Powhatan was the leader of the Confederacy. He found the English colony to be helpful in getting knives and guns in exchanged for corn and other foodstuffs.
During the drought, Powhatan claimed that they could not give too much food because it was for his people. The English colonists did not believe him and kidnapped Powhatan’s daughter, Pocahontas, holding her as a hostage. In captivity, she agreed in 1614 to marry a colonist, John Rolfe, perhaps as a form of diplomatic alliance.
Photo: Chief Powhatan in a longhouse at Werowocomoco (detail of John Smith map, 1612)

7. Images of Pocahontas
Pocahontas sailed with John Rolfe to England, where she died in 1616 after bearing him a son.

8. Jamestown’s prospects brightened considerably once John Rolfe introduced the cash crop of tobacco in 1611, which local Indians had been growing for years.
The spread of tobacco cultivation upset the balance of power in early Virginia in 1611.
Nine years later, Virginians exported 40,000 pounds of cured leaves, and by the late 1620, shipments had jumped to 1.5 million pounds
Tobacco made Virginia prosper, and the colony developed from a small outpost of men into an agricultural settlement inhabitant by both sexes.
However, tobacco cultivation required abundant amounts of land because it drained the soil of nutrients. So people started asking the Virginia Company for larger land grants on both sides of the James River and its tributary streams.
Photo: Harvesting tobacco at Jamestown, about (Painting by Sidney E. King.)
Tobacco was a huge success in England, and its success largely determined the fate of the Virginia region.
Because the crop requires vast acreage and depletes the soil (and so requires farmers to constantly seek new fields), the prominent role of tobacco in Virginia’s economy resulted in rapid expansion.

9. As new settlements sprang up around Jamestown, the entire area came to be known as the Chesapeake (named after the bay). That area today is comprised mostly of Virginia and Maryland.
How do you think the Powhatan Confederacy felt about this?

10. The Powhatan hoped that alliance with the English settlers would give them an advantage over enemy tribes.
The English forgot their debt to the Powhatan as soon as they needed more land to grow tobacco.
After numerous conflicts, the Powhatan Confederacy was eventually destroyed by English “Indian fighters” in 1644.
Cultural differences between the Powhatan and English colonists:
- Indians thought that English men did “female” work because they work out in the fields planting. English believed that Indian men were lazy because they spent most of their time hunting (which is seen as a sport).
- The Powhatan leaders made decisions through consensus, while the English believed there should be only one leader. They became frustrated when the chiefs could not make an independent decision quickly.
- Indians felt that land should be communal, could not be bought or sold. In contrast, they English believed it could.
- Above all, the English settlers believed in the superiority of their civilization. Although they depended on them during the drought, they always assumed that they would dictate the terms of coexistence.
Photo: April 18, 1644: Forces under 99 year old Opechancanough, a leader of the Powhatan Confederacy, attacks the English along the Pamunkey and York rivers, 22 years after his first attack at Jamestown. His followers will kill almost 400 Virginia colonists.

11. Many who migrated to the Chesapeake did so for financial reasons.
Overpopulation in England had led to widespread famine, disease, and poverty.
Chances for improving one’s lot were minimal.
Thus, many were attracted to the New World by the opportunity provided by indentured servitude.
In return for free passage, indentured servants promised 4-7 years’ labor, after which they received their freedom.
Indentured servants accounted for 75-85% of the approximately 130,000 English immigrants to Virginia and Maryland during the 17th century. The rest tended to be young couples with 1-2 children
Most of the indentured servants were you men from farming or laboring families in England. Only one immigrant in five was female.

12. Indentured Servants
Indentured servants became the first means to meet this need for labor.
In return for free passage to Virginia, a laborer worked for 4-7 years in the fields before being granted freedom.
The Crown rewarded planters with 50 acres of land for every inhabitant they brought to the New World.

13. Throughout much of the 17th century, indentured servants might also receive a small piece of property with their freedom.
Indenture was extremely difficult, and nearly half of all indentured servants – most of whom were young, reasonably healthy men – did not survive their period of servitude.
Still, it was popular. More than 75% of the 130,000 Englishmen who migrated to the Chesapeake during the 17th century were indentured servants
After the indentured servants fulfilled their terms, they earned their “freedom dues,” which were clothes, tools, livestock, corn, and tobacco.
From a distance, America seemed to offer chances for advancement unavailable in England.

14. Population of Chesapeake Colonies: 1610-1750
Naturally, the colony began to expand.
This expansion was soon challenged by the Native Americans (particularly the Powhatan)

15. American democracy got an early start in the Chesapeake.
In 1619, Virginia established the House of Burgesses, in which any property-holding, white male could vote.
That year also marked the beginning of slavery in the colonies.