Guide The River of Pearl and Gold: A Story of Jamestown

The conclusion was based on a tree-ring analysis of cypress trees in the region showing that their growth was severely stunted between and It also would have aggravated relations with the Powhatans, who found themselves competing with the English for a dwindling food supply. In fact, the period coincides perfectly with bloody battles between the Indians and the English.

Relations improved when the drought subsided. The drought theory makes new sense of written comments by Smith and others, often overlooked by historians.

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In , for example, Smith records an unsuccessful attempt to trade goods for corn with the Indians. Kelso and his co-workers are hardly the first archaeologists to probe the settlement. In , the APVA acquired In , the U.

Today, the site of the original colonial settlement is largely given over to archaeological research, with few visual links to the past. Bronze statues of Smith and Pocahontas stand along the James River. Kelso is unmistakably pleased with the revisionist spin his findings have given to the Jamestown saga.

Yet rewriting history, he says, was not what he had in mind when he began the work. Because the story was never mentioned in his earlier writings, some historians now dismiss it as legend—though Pocahontas did exist. But Kelso and Straube say they can accurately date most of the artifacts and draw reasonable conclusions as to when certain structures were built and abandoned. Some historians still have their doubts.

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But the reputation of Jamestown as a failure will be a hard one to shake, he adds: During the digging season, excavators uncovered the footprint of a long and narrow building inside the fort. In the cellar of another structure, a student volunteer uncovered wine bottles, intact but empty, that are believed to date to the late s, when Jamestown was prospering as a tobacco and trade center.

And some of them were lazy and incompetent. The proof of the matter is that the settlement survived, and it survived because people persisted and sacrificed. The houses are different—the towns, the agriculture, the commerce. They were really laying the roots of American society. Subscribe or Give a Gift. Humans Reached the Roof of the World 40, Years. Learning to Speak Latino. Science Age of Humans. A New Treatment for Blindness. America's Most Revolutionary Artist. Virginia tobacco had a stronger odor and flavor than tobacco grown in the West Indies, and the English consumers preferred the milder variety.

In , John Rolfe planted this sweeter tobacco in Virginia, and raised enough to ship four barrels of tobacco to England. Rolfe's tobacco sold for a high price, and tobacco quickly became Virginia's main cash crop. At first, the governors of Virginia discouraged settlers from growing tobacco because they wanted them to grow food.

But the colonists, who wanted riches and not just subsistence, were undeterred. They traded tobacco for food brought by ships from other colonies. Profits from growing tobacco saved the Jamestown colony and fueled its growth. Rolfe's discovery that the West Indies tobacco, which he called Orinoco tobacco, could be grown in Virginia saved the colony.

Over the next decades, tobacco became a very profitable crop. With the prospect of making money in Virginia, it was easier to recruit new settlers, and immigration allowed the colony to grow even though death rates were still very high. In addition, colonists needed land to grow their tobacco, and they began moving inland, up the James River and away from the swampy waters near the coasts.

Further inland, the water was cleaner and there were fewer mosquitoes and less disease. Colonists started to live longer. The introduction of tobacco farming also created a need for cheap labor. To maximize profits, land owners needed to find people who could work long, hot hours in the field, but for very little pay. Colonists first used indentured servants for labor. The Virginia Company paid for people's transportation from England to Virginia, which was quite expensive. In Virginia, plantation owners reimbursed the company for that cost, and the new immigrant was required to work for the plantation owner for a period of time, usually seven years, to pay off the debt.

Because mortality rates were so high, only a small fraction of servants in the colony's early years survived for seven years. Of course, many of the plantation owners died, too. If a servant survived their years of servitude, though, he or she would be free. A man would then be able to buy property, something that would have been beyond their means if they stayed in England. The hope of buying land in America made the prospect of seven years of essentially slave labor worthwhile to many people. Most women who came to Virginia as indentured servants eventually got married. Men out numbered women about four to one in Virginia, and so even a servant could marry a wealthy plantation owner.

Most female servants were from poor families, and could never have married "above their station" in England. In , two passing British ships sold 21 slaves to the Governor of Virginia -- the first African slaves in North America. Indentured servants would remain the most common labor supply in Virginia well into the s, though. Slaves were about three times as expensive as indentured servants because a slave was property for life, whereas a servant's term of indenture was only for seven years.

But since life expectancy in mids Virginia was only about seven years, plantation owners could expect as much work from an indentured servant as from a slave. Slaves were a bad investment. This painting shows enslaved Africans working in the tobacco sheds. As living conditions improved, though, slavery became more profitable. Slowly, after about , the colony became more stable and people began to live longer. Slavery would increase and indentured servitude would decrease throughout the rest of the seventeenth century.

Although people continued to come to America as indentured servants until the Revolution, by the beginning of the eighteenth century, slavery was becoming established as the colony's future.

The men of the Virginia company

To control slaves, plantation owners created harsh slave codes. They made slavery hereditary, a condition passed from a mother to her children. To keep the races separate, they also made it illegal for a white person to marry a black person, although this was usually only enforced when a black man tried to marry a white woman. If a slave committed a crime, he or she was punished more severely than a white person. It was also impossible to convict a slave owner of murder; they reasoned that no person would willfully destroy his property. These laws served to put Africans and their descendants into a different social and legal category than white servants.

Other colonies passed similar laws, modeled on the slave codes of Virginia. During the first decades of settlement, the Virginia company tried a number of reforms to help make the colony a success. One of the most important reforms was the creation of the House of Burgesses, a governing body modeled after the British House of Commons and chosen in part by the landowning white men in Virginia.

The British, including the colonists in Virginia, prided themselves on the rights of citizens to participate in their government. The House of Burgesses was made up of 22 members. One was the governor, who was chosen by the directors of the Virginia Company, and he in turn chose six men as his council.

The other 15 Burgesses were elected representatives of the various parts of the colony and eventually from its counties. The House of Burgesses was to meet once a year to make laws for Virginia. These laws could be vetoed by the Governor, by his council, and by the directors of the Virginia Company in London. Ironically, the House of Burgesses -- the first representative government in British America -- first met in , the same year the first slaves were purchased in Virginia.

Democracy and slavery would be linked for a long time to come.

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By the s, nearly 70 percent of all the English settlers who went to Virginia had died. Although tobacco was starting to become profitable, the Virginia Company had failed to make a profit for its investors. Some blamed poor leadership in the colony -- a valid complaint. Nor did the colonists have access to specie through any domestic gold or silver discoveries. In order to have a functioning economy, the colonists were forced to turn to other commodities for use as money.

Spanish coins, from trade with the West Indies and Mexico, circulated freely in the colonies as legal tender. While goods were officially valued in British pounds, in their day-to-day transactions colonists more commonly used the Spanish dollar as their unit of account.

From to , wampum — the shells prized by local Native American tribes — were legal tender in Massachusetts.

Early American Colonists Had a Cash Problem. Here's How They Solved It

This promoted the development of the colony by facilitating trade, but the British did not approve of this monetary system and ended the practice in Throughout the seventeenth century, colonists further south in Virginia and North Carolina employed tobacco leaves as commodity money. In an effort to address the problem of durability, they later substituted tobacco warehouse receipts for the actual tobacco.

These receipts were like promissory notes: Since the bearer of the receipt had a claim on that exact amount of tobacco, the receipts circulated like currency. But tobacco receipts were not easily divisible, and the supply of both tobacco and wampum in circulation could fluctuate widely, making them inadequate stores of value. Lacking a viable commodity to use as money, local colonial governments of the eighteenth century instead turned to paper money.

Paper money could take one of two forms. Commodity-backed paper money was similar to the tobacco warehouse receipts.

Jamestown - John Smith and Pocahontas