Reasons Behind the Jamestown Disasters

In Jamestown, many disasters were causing long-lasting, painful deaths. Many reasons caused Jamestown to lose 80 percent of its population. One of the three reasons that caused this was that the land that they wanted to conquer had people living there already, The Patawomeke Indians. Another reason is the lack of food and water was a big reason that killed many people. And the last reason is disease which caused more than 150 settlers to die. There are many documents to support this.

First of all, Such as in the background essay of document A the Natives weren’t very happy that these unknown settlers are trying to take their land so they just didn’t stand there. The natives would spy on people and wait for the perfect time to ambush anyone leaving the base of Jamestown. Even though the English wanted to be friendly with the natives by buying land from the Natives, Yet the English thought they used money like they did in their hometown but the natives don't use a source of payment to buy things like the English do. Dennis B. Blanton states that even though the English had muskets they still have a disadvantage against the natives. The Natives had a very useful item, the bow, and the arrow. The bow and had many advantages, Such as the bow was very accurate with the person using it. If the person was trained they would have excellent aim and would hit most of their shots. Also, the bow was much faster to shoot than the musket, Likewise the musket would take very long to reload so long that once the mucket takes one-shot the bow and arrow can take 10 shots.

Furthermore, Document B states that the lack of food and freshwater was a big reason, This caused several hundreds of people to die. During winter was a dreadful time that caused most of the colonies to die, The reason for this is that even though they didn’t already have enough food during other seasons but during the winter they had scat food. During winter it was harder for the crops to grow during the conditions that Jamestown was having. This caused the starving time over 400 people to die which was a massive decrease in their population of 500 people. Document B supports heir water was also a big reason people had to go through a painful death, Such as when Jamestown had their drought their source of freshwater started to decrease and the amount of saltwater started to increase. When the colonies would drink their water they would get even more thirsty which causes them to drink enough to cause salt water poisoning. The body will have no source of water so it will start taking all the water from the organs which would make the body weak and make it so they would die sooner or later.

Last but not least, Document E stats that disease which caused a large portion of the colonies to die. Going back to the scat food the colonies had no choice but to eat rats and even poisonous snakes. As winter drove in the colonies suffered until their death. J. Fredrick Fausz states another way that caused the settlers to die is that the waste that they were putting in their river was causing people getting a terrible disease from their waste. Their idea would have worked but since they had a drought their waste wasn't being pushed away which caused it to get into their drinking water. Salmonellosis was a disease caused by eating rodents that carried diseases. Also, The poisonous snakes they would eat the venom would be extracted in their body which caused to die a slow but painful death. There are many diseases from eating animals that you're not supposed to consume, a disease brought oversea, and a lack of food and water.

To end it off the JamesTown colonies had a tough life, 80 percent of the colonies died from long painful deaths, and they had neighboring enemies. All they wanted was a new start to have their own religion but it just turned into a living disaster.There life was tough but JamesTown shaped us and changed our point of view of things so it was bad that 80 percent died but jamestown changed our lives.