Jamestown: Myth or Truth?

Picture breathtaking forests, copious game and fish, ebony soil, mountains with nightcaps made of snow, and all the land you could ever want. Sound like an advertisement for realty in Montana? No, this is what early English settlers expected to see when they stepped off their boats onto the land which was to be their home. They expected nice homes to be built, and life to be an adventure. They were free to impose their religion on others and free to live the way that they wanted. How many settlers weighed the pros and cons of living on a continent without adequate provisions and no sense of self-sufficiency before setting out to sea? Serving Time in Virginia attempts to explain what went wrong in the Virginia colony by using facts robbed of their point of view to provide an overall new perspective. The chapter discussed what Captain John Smith and Sir Edwin Sandys tried to do for the colony and why, after ten years, Jamestown was still not self-sufficient. Serving Time looks at the expansion of tobacco growth in the "first American boom country" and how planters found peons to work their fields, while the colony fell apart in the background.

John Smith provided historians with a valuable nugget of information when he wrote his account of Jamestown entitled A Generall Historie of Virginia. Historians argue over whether Smith was an egotist who told Paul Bunyan-like stories or a settler truthfully accounting his experiences. According to his account, he tried to pull the colony together but was sent back to England after an unreasonable amount of settlers perished because of the colony government's refusal to cooperate amongst themselves (p. 8).

Sir Edwin Sandys tried to mend Jamestown in three ways. He caught the attention of new investors by giving head rights for every new tenant imported. He attracted new settlers by instituting lotteries. He made the colony a more pleasant place to live by eliminating martial law. Citizens had the right to choose two members of the colony as their burgesses or representatives. "When the assembly [of members] convened in 1619 it became the first representative body in the English colonies." (p.10). There were also no high taxes to be paid because government officials were paid with land.

Unfortunately after ten years of reconstruction, Jamestown was still, in so many words, a dump. There were laws enforced to make the citizens grow corn. Food was scarce; new settlers came unprepared; housing was inadequate; and contaminated wells led to disease. Instead of growing the corn needed for food, settlers grew tobacco in "the market-place and streets, and all other spare places" (p. 13). Historians ask why Jamestown wasn't self-sufficient by now.

One reason may be that Virginia "had indeed become a boom country" (p. 13). The settlers found new ways to produce bigger crops of tobacco. They also ascertained that they could produce more if they had servants toiling their crops. This is where tenants, servants, "duty boys" and some slavery come into play. Tenants gave half of what they produced to plantation owners and worked their fields for four to seven years. Servants gave everything to their master in exchange for room, board, and their passage from England. "Duty boys" (named after the ship that brought them to Virginia) served apprenticeships for seven years then as tenants for another seven years. The only thing these boys got in return was transportation to the colony and room and board. So with the help of new laborers and the hope of getting rich quickly, colonists put everything they had into producing tobacco. Tobacco had even become the economic means of exchange to the colony.

During a time when labor was valued so greatly, one must wonder why slavery didn't flourish. Africans only made up 5% of the population in Virginia in the colony's first half century. And it wasn't until 1660 that legislature was passed defining slavery and separating the races. Why weren't slaves a commodity in the 1620s? Historians tend to believe it could be that slavery was not as available to the colony as it was to St. Kitts or Barbados (places that demanded Africans more so than the colony). They also believe that colonists preferred white servants. Not much sense can be made from this statement since a.) servant prices were higher at this time and b.) the economic depression in the West Indies decreased the price of slave. The only reasoning that might be reached is that the high mortality rate caused colonists to purchase servants even though slaves were bound for life.

Serving Time in Virginia explains how historians have made deductions to reveal that "life in the young colony was more volatile, acquisitive, rowdy, raw-and deadly-than most traditional accounts have assumed" (p.7). Is John Smith to be believed? Who can tell? Instead of depending entirely on his account of the colony, the author of this chapter uses his own inferences to decide what really went wrong along the Chesapeake Bay to cause the death of over 1000 settlers.

After The Fact: The Art of Historical Detection. Davidson, James West; Lytle, Mark Hamilton. JMVintage (Palm Desert, CA)
A General Historie of Virginia, New-England, and the Summer Isles. John Smith, 1624.