2-17-11                      America, Found and Lost

Tobacco was very popular back during the 1600s. When bringing tobacco back to England the sailors would dump out stones and soil, which most likely contained English earthworms. The earthworms ate the leaves that had piled up on the forest floor. This caused many small plants in the woods to die because they used the leaves for food. America was worm free until the English came over.

On May 14^th, 1607, 104 colonists disembarked on Jamestown peninsula. These settlers arrived in the middle of a small but rapidly growing nation called Tsenacomoco. Its leader was Powhatan, and he had tripled his nations size to about 8,000 square miles and about 14,000 people. The people lived in villages with a couple hundred people in them, and large areas of cleared land surrounded the villages. In the fall the Native Americans burned the underbrush in the forests, which made the forests look park like.

The settlement at Jamestown was one of the only settlements that wasn’t destroyed by the Powhatan Indians. Jamestown was a very bad place to settle because there were lots of mosquitoes there and the water was gross and terrible to drink. Many people died at Jamestown but many more were brought in. John Smith took charge and Jamestown started going uphill but then he left for medical treatment in England and the death toll rose again that winter.

The colonists became friendly with the Native Americans and started using their “abandoned” land as farming soil for tobacco. The colonists also brought over lots of farm animals, which trod all over the Native Americans farmland, but they were not allowed to shoot them. The Native Americans ended up fighting for food with the animals. The Native Americans also didn’t like the honeybee because it was what helped the colonies survive. The colonists kept pushing the Native Americans farther and farther west, and Powhatan never fought back.