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The Starving Time, and What Followed

The Starving Time, and What Followed

When Captain John Smith went back to England, in 1609, there were nearly five hundred settlers in Virginia. But the settlers soon got into trouble with the American Indians, who lay in the woods and killed every one that ventured out. There was no longer any chance to buy corn, and the food was soon exhausted. The starving people ate the hogs, the dogs, and the horses, even to their skins. Then they ate rats, mice, snakes, toadstools, and whatever they could get that might stop their hunger. One deceased American Indian was eaten, and, as their hunger grew more extreme, they were forced to consume their own dead. Starving men wandered off into the woods and died there; their companions, finding them, devoured them as hungry wild beasts might have done. This was always afterward remembered as “the starving time.”

Map Showing the Colony of Virginia by Willem Blaeu


Along with the people who came at the close of John Smith’s time, there had been sent another shipload of people, with Sir Thomas Gates, a new governor for the colony. This vessel had been shipwrecked, but Gates and his people had got ashore on the Bermuda Islands. These islands had no inhabitants at that time. Here these shipwrecked people lived well on wild hogs. When spring came, they built two little vessels of the cedar trees which grew on the island. These they rigged with sails taken from their wrecked ships, and getting their people aboard they made their way to Jamestown.

When they got there, they found alive but sixty of the four hundred and ninety people left in Virginia in the autumn before, and these sixty would all have died had Gates been ten days later in coming. The food that Gates brought would barely last them sixteen days. So he put the Jamestown people aboard his little cedar ships, intending to sail to Newfoundland, in hope of there falling in with some English fishing-vessels. He set sail down the river, leaving not one English settler on the whole continent of America.

Just before Gates and his people got out of the James River, they met a long boat rowing up toward them. Lord De la Warr had been appointed governor of Virginia, and sent out from England. From some men at the mouth of the river he had learned that Gates and all the people were coming down. He sent his long boat to turn them back again. On a Sunday morning De la Warr landed in Jamestown and knelt on the ground a while in prayer. Then he went to the little church, where he took possession of the government, and rebuked the people for the idleness that had brought them into such suffering.
‘Pocahontas’ After Simon van de Passe
During this summer of 1610, a hundred and fifty of the settlers died, and Lord De la Warr, finding himself very ill, left the colony. The next year Sir Thomas Dale took charge, and Virginia was under his government and that of Sir Thomas Gates for five years afterward.

Dale was a soldier, and ruled with extreme severity. He forced the idle settlers to labor, he drove away some of the American Indians, settled some new towns, and he built fortifications. But he was so harsh that the people hated him. He punished men by flogging and by setting them to work in irons for years. Those who rebelled or ran away were put to death in cruel ways; some were burned alive, others were broken on the wheel, and one man, for merely stealing food, was starved to death.

Powhatan, the head chief of the neighboring tribes, gave the colony a great deal of trouble during the first part of Dale’s time. His daughter, Pocahontas, who, as a child, had often played with the boys within the palisades of Jamestown, and had shown herself friendly to Captain Smith and others in their trips among the American Indians, was now a woman grown. While she was visiting a chief named Japazaws, an English captain named Argall hired that chief with a copper kettle to betray her into his hands. Argall took her a captive to Jamestown. Here a settler by the name of John Rolfe married her, after she had received Christian baptism. This marriage brought about a peace between Powhatan and the English settlers in Virginia.

When Dale went back to England in 1616, he took with him some of the American Indians. Pocahontas, who was now called “the Lady Rebecca,” and her husband went to England with Dale. Pocahontas was called a “princess” in England, and received much attention. But she died when about to start back to the colony, leaving a little son.

The same John Rolfe who married Pocahontas was the first Englishman to raise tobacco in Virginia. This he did in 1612. Tobacco brought a large price in that day, and, as it furnished a means by which people in Virginia could make a living, it helped to make the colony successful. But in 1616 there were only three hundred and fifty English people in all North America.

 A History of the United States and its People by Edward Eggleston 

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 A History of the United States and its People by Edward Eggleston 

A History of the United States and its People by Edward Eggleston

The content outlines the early history of the United States, detailing exploration, settlement, colonial life, conflicts, and the events leading to the American Revolution.

CHAPTER

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The Coming of the Pilgrims

In the seventeenth century (that is, between the year 1600 and the year 1700) there was much religious persecution. In some countries the Catholics persecuted the Protestants, in other countries the Protestants persecuted the Catholics, and sometimes one kind of Protestants persecuted another. There were people in England who did not like the ceremonies of the Church of England, as established by law. These were called Puritans. Some of these went so far as to separate themselves from the Established Church and thus got the name of Separatists. They were persecuted in England, and many of them fled to Holland.

‘Embarkation of the Pilgrims’ by Robert W. Weir


Among these were the members of a little Separatist congregation in Scrooby, in the north of England. Their pastor’s name was John Robinson. In 1607, the year in which Jamestown was settled, these persecuted people left England and settled in Holland, where they lived about thirteen years, most of the time in the city of Leyden [li’-den]. Then they thought they would like to plant a colony in America, where they could be religious in their own way. These are the people that we call “The Pilgrims,” on account of their wanderings for the sake of their religion.

About half of them were to go first. The rest went down to the sea to say farewell to those who were going. It was a sad parting, as they all knelt down on the shore and prayed together. The Pilgrims came to America in a ship called the Mayflower. There were about a hundred of them, and they had a stormy and wretched passage. They intended to go to the Hudson River, but their captain took them to Cape Cod. After exploring the coast north of that cape for some distance, they selected as a place to land a harbor which had been called Plymouth on the map prepared by Captain John Smith, who had sailed along this coast in an open boat in 1614.

All the American Indians who had lived at this place had died a few years before of a pestilence, and the Pilgrims found the American Indian fields unoccupied. They first landed at this place on the nth day of December, 1620, as the days were then counted. This is the same as the 21st of December now, the mode of counting having changed since that time. (Through a mistake, the 22nd of December is generally kept in New England as “Forefathers’ Day.”) Before landing, the Pilgrims drew up an agreement by which they promised to be governed.

The bad voyage, the poor food with which they were provided, and a lack of good shelter in a climate colder than that from which they came, had their natural effect. Like the first settlers at Jamestown, they were soon nearly all sick. Forty-four out of the hundred Pilgrims died before the winter was ended, and by the time the first year was over half of them were dead. The Pilgrims were afraid of the American Indians, some of whom had attacked the first exploring party that had landed. To prevent the American Indians from finding out how much the party had been weakened by disease, they leveled all the graves, and planted Indian corn over the place in which the dead were buried.
‘The Mayflower Compact, 1620’ by the Architect of the Capitol
One day, after the winter was over, an American Indian walked into the village and said in English, “Welcome, Englishmen.” He was a chief named Sam-o’-set, who had learned a little English from the fishermen on the coast of Maine. Samoset afterward brought with him an American Indian named Squanto, who had been carried away to England by a cruel captain many years before, and then brought back. Squanto remained with the Pilgrims, and taught them how to plant their corn as the American Indians did, by putting one or two fish into every hill for manure. He taught them many other things, and acted as their interpreter in their trading with the American Indians. He told the American Indians that they must keep peace with the settlers, who had the pestilence stored in their cellar along with the gunpowder. The neighboring chief, Mas-sa-so’-it, was also a good friend to the Pilgrims as long as he lived.

Captain Myles Standish was the military commander at Plymouth. He dealt severely with any American Indians supposed to be hostile. Finding that certain of the Massachusetts Indians were planning to kill all the settlers, he and some of his men seized the plotters suddenly and killed them with the knives which the American Indians wore suspended from their own necks.

The people of Plymouth suffered much from scarcity of food for several years. They had often nothing but oysters or clams to eat for a long time together, and no drink but water Like the Jamestown people, they tried a plan of living out of a common stock, but with no better success. In 1624 each family received a small allotment of land for its own, and from that time there was always plenty to eat in Plymouth. Others of the Pilgrims came to them from Holland, as well as a few emigrants from England. Plymouth Colony was, next to Virginia, the oldest colony of all, but it did not grow very fast, and in 1692, by a charter from King William III, it was united with Massachusetts, of which its territory still forms a part.



PILGRIMS AT HOME

The Pilgrims held their meetings in a square house on top of a hill at Plymouth. On the flat roof of this house were six small cannons. The people were called to church by the beating of a drum. The men carried loaded firearms with them when they went to meeting on Sunday, and put them where they could reach them easily. The town was surrounded by a stockade and had three gates. Elder Brewster was the religious teacher of the Pilgrims at Plymouth; their minister, John Robinson, having stayed with those who waited in Holland, and died there. It is said that Brewster, when he had nothing but shellfish and water for dinner, would cheerfully give thanks that they were “permitted to suck of the abundance of the seas and of the treasures hid in the sand.”

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How Jamestown was Settled

After the total disappearance of Raleigh’s second colony, many years passed before another attempt was made. In 1602 Bartholomew Gosnold tried to plant a colony on the Island of Cuttyhunk, Massachusetts, in Buzzard’s Bay. If this had succeeded, New England would have been first settled, but the men that were to stay went back in the ship that brought them. In 1603 Queen Elizabeth died, and her cousin, James VI, King of Scotland, came to the throne of England as James I. In 1606, while Raleigh was shut up in the Tower of London, a company of merchants and others undertook to send a new colony to America. Some of the men who had been Raleigh’s partners in his last colony were members of this new “Virginia Company.”

It was in the stormy December of 1606 that the little colony set out. There were, of course, no steamships then; and the vessels they had were clumsy, small, and slow. The largest of the three ships that carried out the handful of people which began the settlement of the United States was named “Susan Constant.” She was of a hundred tons burden. Not many ships so small cross the ocean today. But the “Godspeed” which went along with her was not half so big, and the smallest of the three was a little pinnace of only twenty tons, called “Discovery.”

On account of storms, these feeble ships were not able to get out of sight of the English coast for six weeks. People in that time were afraid to sail straight across the unknown Atlantic Ocean; they went away south by the Canary Islands and the West Indies, and so made the distance twice as great as it ought to have been. It took the new colony about four months to get from London to Virginia. They intended to land on Roanoke Island, where Raleigh’s unfortunate colonies had been settled, but a storm drove them into a large river, which they called “James River,” in honor of the king. They arrived in Virginia in the month of April, when the banks of the river were covered with flowers. Great white dog-wood blossoms and masses of bright-colored red-bud were in bloom all along the James River. The newcomers said that heaven and earth had agreed together to make this a country to live in.
Replica Ship Susan Constant (In Front of Navy Vessel)
After sailing up and down the river they selected a place to live upon, which they called Jamestown.

The Jamestown Colony

They had now pretty well eaten up their supply of food, and they had been so slow in settling themselves that it was too late to plant even if they had cleared ground. One small ladleful of pottage made of worm-eaten barley or wheat was all that was given to a man for a meal. The settlers were attacked by the American Indians, who wounded seventeen men and killed one boy in the fight. Each man in Jamestown had to take his turn every third night in watching against the American Indians, lying on the cold, bare ground all night. The only water to drink was that from the river, which was bad. The people were soon nearly all of them sick; there were not five able-bodied men to defend the place had it been attacked. Sometimes as many as three or four died in a single night, and sometimes the living were hardly able to bury those who had died. There were about a hundred colonists landed at Jamestown, and one half of these died in the first few months. All this time the men in Jamestown were living in wretched tents and poor little hovels covered with earth, and some of them even in holes dug into the ground. As the sickness passed away, those who remained built themselves better cabins, and thatched the roofs with straw.
Captain John Smith
One of the most industrious men in the colony at this time was Captain John Smith, a young man who had had many adventures, of which he was fond of boasting. He took the little pinnace “Discovery” and sailed up and down the rivers and bays of Virginia, exploring the country, getting acquainted with many tribes of American Indians, and exchanging beads, bells, and other trinkets for corn, with which he kept the Jamestown people from starving. In one of these trips two of his men were killed, and he was made captive, and led from tribe to tribe a prisoner. But he managed so well that Powhatan [povv-at-tan’], the head chief of about thirty tribes, set him free and sent him back to Jamestown. It was in this captivity that he made the acquaintance of Pocahontas [po-ka-hun’-tas], a daughter of Powhatan. She was then about ten years old, and Captain Smith greatly admired her. Many years afterward he told a pretty story about her putting her arms about her neck and saving his life when Powhatan wished to put him to death.

John Smith explored Chesapeake Bay in two voyages, enduring many hardships with cheerfulness. He and his men would move their fire two or three times in a cold night, that they might have the warm ground to lie upon. He managed the American Indians well, put down mutinies at Jamestown, and rendered many other services to the colony. He was the leading man in the new settlement, and came at length to be governor. But when many hundreds of new settlers were brought out under men who were his enemies, and Smith had been injured by an explosion of gunpowder, he gave up the government and went back to England.



CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH

Captain John Smith was born in England in 1579. While yet little more than a boy, he went into the wars in the Netherlands. He was afterward shipwrecked, robbed at sea, and suffered great want in France. He fought against the Turks and slew three of them in single combat. He was at length made prisoner by the Turks and reduced to slavery. By killing his master, he got free, escaping into Russia, after sixteen days of wandering. He got back to England and soon departed with the first company to Jamestown. After leaving Virginia he was the first to examine carefully the coast of New England, and he received the title of “Admiral of New England.” He was a bold and able explorer and a brave man, with much practical wisdom. His chief faults were his vanity and boastfulness, which led him to exaggerate his romantic adventures. But without him the Jamestown colony would probably have perished. Like many other worthy men, he died poor and neglected.

 A History of the United States and its People by Edward Eggleston 

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 Sir Walter Raleigh Tries to Settle a Colony in America

Sir Walter Raleigh

Sir Walter Raleigh, while yet a young man, fought for years on the side of the Huguenots in the French civil wars, and afterward in the war in Ireland. On his return from Ireland, it is said that he won the Queen’s favor by throwing his new plush cloak into a muddy place in the road for her to walk on. He fitted out ships and fought against the Great Armada, or fleet, of Spain, when that country tried to conquer England. He was a great statesman, a great soldier, a great seaman, and an excellent poet and historian. He is said to have first planted the potato in Ireland. King James I kept him in prison in the Tower for more than twelve years, and then released him. In 1618 the same king had this great man put to death to please the King of Spain. When Raleigh was about to be beheaded, he felt of the edge of the axe, and said, “It is a sharp medicine to cure me of all my diseases.”

Sir Walter Raleigh was the first that landed a colony of English people on the land that is now the United States. Having received from Queen Elizabeth a charter which gave him a large territory in America, he sent out an exploring expedition in 1584, ninety-two years after the discovery by Columbus. This expedition was commanded by two captains, named Amidas and Barlowe. They landed on the coast in that part of America which we now call North Carolina. The country pleased them very much. They wondered at the wild grape-vines, which grew to the tops of the highest trees, and they found the American Indians very friendly. They stayed about six weeks in the New World, and, everything here being strange to their eyes, they fell into many mistakes in trying to describe what they saw and heard. When they got back to England, they declared that the part of America they had seen was the paradise of the world.

Raleigh was much encouraged by the accounts which his two captains gave of the new country they had found. It was named Virginia at this time, in honor of Queen Elizabeth, who was often called the “Virgin Queen.” But the name Virginia, which we apply to two of our states, was then used for nearly the whole eastern part of what is now the United States, between Maine and Georgia.
Queen Elizabeth I of England
In 1585, the year after the return of the first expedition, Raleigh sent out a colony to remain in America. Sir Richard Grenville, a famous seaman, had command of this expedition; but he soon returned to England, leaving the colony in charge of Ralph Lane. There were no women in Ralph Lane’s company. They made their settlement on Roanoke Island, which lies near to the coast of North Carolina, and they explored the mainland in many directions. They spent much time in trying to find gold, and they seem to have thought that the shell-beads worn by the American Indians were pearls. Like all the others who came to America in that time, they were very desirous of finding a way to get across America, which they believed to be very narrow. They hoped to reach the Pacific Ocean, and so open a new way of sailing: to China and the East Indies.

The American Indians by this time were tired of the settlers, and anxious to be rid of them. They told Lane that the Roanoke River came out of a rock so near to a sea at the west that the water sometimes dashed from the sea into the river, making the water of the river salt. Lane believed this story, and set out with most of his men to find a sea at the head of the river. Long before they got to the head of the Roanoke, their provisions gave out. But Lane made a brave speech to his men, and they resolved to go on. Having nothing else to eat, they killed their two dogs, and cooked the meat with sassafras leaves to give it a relish. When this meat was exhausted, they got into their boats and ran swiftly down the river, having no food to eat on the way home. Lane got back to Roanoke Island just in time to keep the American Indians from killing the men he had left there.

Sir Francis Drake came to see the colony on his return from an expedition to the West Indies. He furnished the company on the island with a ship and with whatever else they needed. But, while he remained at Roanoke, a storm arose which drove to sea the ship he had given to Lane. This so discouraged the colonists that they returned to England.
Tobacco Field in South Carolina
Ralph Lane and his companions were the first to carry tobacco into England. They learned from the American Indians to smoke it by drawing the smoke into their mouths and puffing it out through their nostrils. Raleigh adopted the practice, and many distinguished men and women followed his example. Some of the first tobacco-pipes in England were made by using a walnut-shell for the bowl of the pipe and a straw for the stem. It is related that, when Raleigh’s servant first saw his master with the smoke coming from his nose, he thought him to be on fire, and poured a pitcher of ale, which he was fetching, over Sir Walter’s head, to put the fire out.

Raleigh set to work, with the help of others, to send out another colony. This time he sent women and children, as well as men, intending to make a permanent settlement. The governor of this company was John White, an artist. Soon after White’s company had settled themselves on Roanoke Island, an English child was born. This little girl, being the first English child born in Virginia, was named Virginia Dare.

John White, the governor of the colony, who was Virginia Dare’s grandfather went back to England for supplies. He was detained by the war with Spain, and, when he got back to Roanoke Island, the colony had disappeared Raleigh had spent so much money already that he was forced to give up the attempt’ to plant a colony in America. But he sent several times to seek for the lost people of his second colony, without finding them. Twenty years after John White left them, it was said that seven of them were still alive among the American Indians of North Carolina.

 A History of the United States and its People by Edward Eggleston 

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