Why Did So Many Colonists Die?

Author’s Note- This piece is about Jamestown and why so many colonists died. While reading this piece, look for good organization, mainly in my body paragraphs.

America; it seemed like such a perfect place. The colonists decided to travel all the way from England on December 20^th of 1606. They arrived in May of 1607 with 105 colonists. Many colonists died on the trip over from disease, but the ones who survived had a long troublesome journey ahead of them. They face many big issues; such as, a drought, headstrong Native American’s, and the wrong group of people. All of these things have to do with why this seemed so hard. If they would just start actually working, the outcome might have been different.

                                                                                                                                                 

The new English settlers and the Native American’s that already lived in America had some differences. To be honest, I think they worked out their differences very childish. Instead of compromising or talking it out, they went to the absolute extremes and started fighting and using violence as a problem solver. The English cut off some of the Native American’s heads and other extremities. On the other hand, the Native American’s attacked the English and killed many of them. They both weren’t nice to each other

The Colonists had a lot of problems, but water was one of the biggest. They had many water sources, but it wasn’t clean. Such as, the river water was dirty most of the time because the tides from Chesapeake Bay  backed up the James River water. It stayed there and festered, rather than flushing away and brining in new, clean water. Also, the drinking water was brackish, therefore they couldn’t drink or cook with it. It was salty, like ocean water; drink too much of it and you hallucinate and start going crazy.  In 1607, they had a long period of time where it didn’t rain. This drought prevented them from growing crops to trade with the Native American’s and for having food for themselves.

The trip coming to America was a big deal, so automatically, you think the Colonists were super prepared; that wasn’t the case though. They didn’t bring over the best group of people to start a new life. On the first ship over, there were 47 gentleman, 12 laborers, 4 carpenters, 6 governors and more useless occupations. Some of these, such as the carpenters, could be useful with building. Most of these can’t do much though. The 47 gentleman are used to getting served and having people work for them. The Colonists poor decision on who to bring over on the first ship made a huge impact on the amount of people that died. Most of these people weren’t used to working hard and weren’t prepared for this, so they died from getting diseases and not having fighting abilities.

The whole process of getting everyone over to America, and then later traveling back to Europe, was a lot of work. The ones who survived, are the ones who actually worked and made the smart decision to fend for themselves. On the other hand, there were a lot of “gentleman” who were too lazy work, therefore, they ended up dying. They didn’t stay healthy, so they got diseases; or, they refused to plant crops, so they had nothing to eat. The Native American’s were very headstrong and weren’t afraid to attack the Colonists if needed. The ones who didn’t act fairly with the Native American’s were killed in the attack. This shows that if you want to start a new life, it is a lot of work and you have to be up for the challenge.