Jamestown Study Guide

People to know:

1. John Smith: one of several leaders of the early colony. He made friends with the Powhatan Indians who helped the colonists at times by bringing them food.

2. Pocahontas: the daughter of Powhatan, chief of 30 tribes. She married John Rolfe, had a baby named Thomas, and died on a trip to England at the age of 21. Her Christian name was Rebecca.

3. King James I: the king of England at the time Jamestown was founded (1607) and for whom the colony and the river were named.

Vocabulary:

1. The “starving time”: In 1609, after John Smith had returned to England, the colonists had an exceptionally hard time. The Powhatans attacked Jamestown, killing many colonists. Most of the rest died that winter due to starvation, disease, or the extreme cold. Only 60 of the 500 colonists survived.

2. Indentured servants: men or women who agreed to work for American colonists for 7 years in return for their passage to America.

3. Tobacco: the most important cash crop to the Jamestown colonists.

4. Artifact: anything made or used by humans: pieces of dishes, tools, buttons, etc.

Concepts:

1. Jamestown was founded for the purpose of gaining land and riches for England. Spanish explorers had found much gold and silver in the New World, and the English hoped to do so also. They were disappointed; there was no gold in Virginia.

2. The first Blacks in Virginia were brought to Jamestown in 1619. They were sold as slaves to wealthy planters, but their owners treated them as indentured servants and gave them their freedom after they had worked for their owners for 5 to 7 years. Blacks were not regarded as slaves in Jamestown until 1665.

3. The House of Burgesses was established in Jamestown in 1619. A burgess was a representative elected by the people. The Burgesses drafted laws for the colony.

The laws had to be sent to the king for approval. The king also appointed a governor.

4. Tobacco became Virginia’s “gold.” John Rolfe experimented with seeds brought from Trinidad and Venezuela to improve the native wild tobacco used by Indians. Huge plantations were established and their main crop was tobacco. However, tobacco quickly wears out the soil by taking out the nutrients it needs to grow. So farmers kept moving to and clearing new fields, pushing the Indians farther and farther west. This angered the Indians and they retaliated in a terrible massacre in 1622. Tobacco caused other problems as well. In the beginning, colonists sold crops to several European countries. Then England passed a law that colonists sell tobacco only to England and at a reduced price. Naturally, colonists were not happy about this law.

5. In 1665, England decreed that indentured servants could no longer be sent to the Virginia colony. With their large plantations, the Virginia colonists needed more workers. So this is when Blacks began to be treated as slaves and bought in large numbers.

6. The Pilgrims, or Puritans, were a group of people who felt they were persecuted for their religious beliefs in England. In 1620 they traveled aboard the Mayflower to America and founded the colony of Plymouth in what is now Massachusetts. The important thing to remember is that they came to America for religious freedom, whereas the first Jamestown settlers came to get rich.