Essay Early Jamestown Why Did So Many People Die

Everyone dies. It’s a known fact of life. It’s only a big deal when a bunch of people die at once. This is what happened at early Jamestown, but no one knows what happened to everyone. Early Jamestown is the first people who discovered it. In 1607 110 Englishman arrived to the new world and settled at Jamestown in what is now Virginia. It was the first English colony in the New World. One year later the population went down to only 40 people. Why did so many people die? Colonists in Jamestown died because of three problems. These problems are Native American attacks, disease, and starvation/drought.

One reason Jamestown’s residents died was Native Americans attacked them. In 1609 Francis West sailed up with his thirty-six men went up to the Chesapeake Bay to go trade grain with the Native Americans. It seem as West forced the Natives to trade with them because it is written down that one of the men on the trip cut off “two of the Savages heads and other extremities” (Doc D). This may cause the Natives to want revenge and kill the Jamestown colonists. Another piece of evidence is that Jamestown recorded the jobs they had when they first arrived and then the jobs of the 1st resupply. When they first arrived they had no gunsmiths and then in the 1st resupply they had 1 gunsmith (Doc C). This could mean that they had an …show more content…
A piece of evidence for this is that there is a report that their water became blackish and that caused disease in the colony (Doc A). Another piece of evidence is that it is reported that after the first resupply they gain 2 apothecaries or druggists (Doc C). This may mean that they needed to get people to help them with medicine since so many people were sick. The last piece it evidence is that it is reported that summer sickness killed half the colonists in 1607, in 1608 28 died from sickness, and in 1609 and 1610, 100 Jamestown residents died of sickness. (Doc