This act of piracy, politely called “privateering” in the 17th century, led to the White Lion bringing the first Africans to Jamestown. While in the Gulf of Mexico, two English privateers, the White Lion and the Treasurer, attacked the ship and stole 50 to 60 African captives on board. They were originally captured in modern-day Angola, an area of West Central Africa, and forced to march over 100 miles to board the San Juan Bautista, a Portuguese ship destined for Mexico. He reported that a Dutch ship had arrived with “20 and odd” Africans who were “bought for victuals.” August 1619 is the date that the first enslaved Africans were brought to Virginia, but they didn’t arrive on a Dutch ship as Rolfe mentioned. John Rolfe documented the arrival of the first African captives to Jamestown in late August 1619.
The arrival of a Dutch slave ship in Jamestown, Virginia, 1619. Rolfe may have smuggled the seeds from Bermuda, where some of the fleet was shipwrecked for 10 months before arriving in Jamestown, or somewhere in the Caribbean. Until then, Spain had controlled tobacco on the European markets and selling seeds to non-Spaniards was a crime punishable by death. No one knows where or how Rolfe obtained the seeds.
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After some initial trial and error, Rolfe cultivated them into a major cash crop-one surprisingly granted a monopoly from King James I-making Jamestown economically stable for the first time. He brought with him a sweet, and quite possibly illegal, strain of South American tobacco seeds. Then, in 1610, John Rolfe arrived in Jamestown with a convoy of 150 new settlers. The colonists dabbled in forestry, silk making and glassmaking, with little financial return. The settlement had struggled to find a marketable commodity that it could trade and ship back to England for profit. It’s ironic that this very crop gave Jamestown its economic viability.
“A custome lothsome to the eye, hatefull to the Nose,” he once declared. King James I had a strong, and well-known, distaste for tobacco. Settlers roll barrels of tobacco up a ramp and onto a ship in preparation for export. The birth of American democracy began in Jamestown. READ MORE: How Colonization's Death Toll May Have Affected Earth's Climate 7. The dramatic weather patterns in the Virginia colony brought on a cycle of conflict, scarcity and death, with climate change threatening its survival. The 17th century was also one of the coldest on record. The colonists arrived in Jamestown during one of the driest seven-year periods (1606-1612) in 770 years. Wet springs led to flooding, hot summers brought on droughts, and frigid winters covered the landscape in blankets of thick frost. To make matters worse, the already harsh and unpredictable environment was exacerbated by climate change, namely a “ Little Ice Age” that lasted from 1550 to 1800. They soon discovered that the New World was both hotter and colder than they expected. The NFL's Last Helmetless Player Didn't Even Like Hatsīefore their arrival, European explorers assumed America's climate would match that of other lands situated at the same latitude.
When the death toll spiked between May and September of 1607, they also made use of double burials with two men laid to rest in the same shaft. The men followed orders, burying their deceased out of sight behind the fort wall. Concerned about prying eyes and an ambush on a weakened colony, they had stressed "above all things" that the colonists hide the sick and bury the dead in unmarked graves. The Virginia Company had predicted that disease would manifest, and lives would be lost. Bodies were buried in unmarked graves to conceal the colony’s decline in manpower.īefore more colonists arrived from England, the population of Jamestown dwindled. READ MORE: What Was Life Like in Jamestown? 3. Modern-day samples taken from some of the wells used by Jamestown colonists have revealed high levels of salt and varying degrees of arsenic and fecal contamination-a foul, and potentially lethal, cocktail. Experts also believe that some may have succumbed to an invisible threat: toxic water. Others met their fate in skirmishes with the Powhatans and their tribal allies. As documented in colonial records, many died from disease and famine.
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