English: Reasons to plant a colony in New England, ca. French: Advice and replies for emigrants to New France, Dutch: Dialogue on the advantages of New Netherland, Instructions for Leaders » Reading Guide -. Spanish: Monarchs' instructions for Hispaniola, English: Investors' instructions for Jamestown, ca. English: Founder's instructions for Maryland, Missions to the Indians » Reading Guide -. Spanish: Franciscan report on the New Mexico missions, French: Jesuit reports on the New France missions, Enslaved Peoples » Reading Guide -.
Spanish: Enslaved Indians in the Caribbean, s. Spanish: Enslaved Africans in Mexico, Go Ahead? Spanish: On keeping St. Augustine and New Mexico, While these first Africans may have been treated as indentured servants, the customary practice of owning Africans as slaves for life appeared by mid-century. The number of African slaves increased significantly in the second half of the 17th century, replacing indentured servants as the primary source of labor.
The first representative government in British America began at Jamestown in with the convening of a general assembly, at the request of settlers who wanted input in the laws governing them. After a series of events, including a war with the Powhatan Indians and misconduct among some of the Virginia Company leaders in England, the Virginia Company was dissolved by the king in , and Virginia became a royal colony.
Stories of a New World. Live Webcasts. History is Fun Blog. View Site Map. Donations to the Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation, Inc. The tax identification number is Haitian Creole. Chinese Simplified. After forming a governing council—including Christopher Newport, commander of the sea voyage, and Captain John Smith , a former mercenary who had been accused of insubordination aboard ship by several other company members—the group searched for a suitable settlement site.
On May 13, , they landed on a narrow peninsula—virtually an island—in the James River, where they would begin their lives in the New World. Known variously as James Forte, James Towne and James Cittie, the new settlement initially consisted of a wooden fort built in a triangle around a storehouse for weapons and other supplies, a church and a number of houses. By the summer of , Newport went back to England with two ships and 40 crewmembers to give a report to the king and to gather more supplies and colonists.
The settlers left behind suffered greatly from hunger and illnesses like typhoid and dysentery, caused from drinking contaminated water from the nearby swamp. Settlers also lived under constant threat of attack by members of local Algonquian tribes, most of which were organized into a kind of empire under Chief Powhatan.
Firsthand accounts describe desperate people eating pets and shoe leather. Some Jamestown colonists even resorted to cannibalism. In the spring of , just as the remaining colonists were set to abandon Jamestown, two ships arrived bearing at least new settlers, a cache of supplies and the new English governor of the colony, Lord De La Warr.
The baptism of Pocahontas in Jamestown before her marriage to John Rolfe. They took a hard line with Powhatan and launched raids against Algonquian villages, killing residents and burning houses and crops. The English began to build other forts and settlements up and down the James River, and by the fall of had managed to harvest a decent crop of corn themselves.
They had also learned other valuable techniques from the Algonquians, including how to insulate their dwellings against the weather using tree bark, and expanded Jamestown into a New Town to the east of the original fort. A period of relative peace followed the marriage in April of the colonist and tobacco planter John Rolfe to Pocahontas , a daughter of Chief Powhatan who had been captured by the settlers and converted to Christianity.
That same year, the first Africans around 50 men, women and children arrived in the English settlement; they had been on a Portuguese slave ship captured in the West Indies and brought to the Jamestown region. They worked as indentured servants at first the race-based slavery system developed in North America in the s and were most likely put to work picking tobacco. In March , the Powhatan made a major assault on English settlements in Virginia, killing some to residents a full one-quarter of the population.
The attack hit the outposts of Jamestown the hardest, while the town itself received advance warning and was able to mount a defense. In an effort to take greater control of the situation, King James I dissolved the Virginia Company and made Virginia into an official crown colony, with Jamestown as its capital, in The New Town area of Jamestown continued to grow, and the original fort seems to have disappeared after the s.
Colonists, enraged at declining tobacco prices and higher taxes, sought a scapegoat in local tribes who still periodically sparred with settlers and lived on land they hoped to obtain for themselves. A July raid by the Doeg tribe sparked retaliation, and when Governor Berkeley set up a meeting between the two quarreling parties, several tribal chiefs were murdered.
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