America's First Footprints

English Background and Earlier Attempts

English interest in North American colonization intensified in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, driven by rivalry with Spain, the search for new trade routes and resources, and the desire for Protestant settlements. Sir Walter Raleigh had sponsored earlier English efforts on the Outer Banks of present-day North Carolina (then claimed as part of Virginia). A military colony under Ralph Lane occupied Roanoke Island in 1585–1586 and was evacuated. A second group of about 115 settlers under John White arrived in 1587; White returned to England for supplies and, delayed by the Spanish Armada, found the site abandoned upon his return in 1590. These failures provided lessons on logistics, supply, and the need for better financing and organization.

By the early 1600s, merchants and gentry in London sought a more structured joint-stock approach. On April 10, 1606, King James I granted a royal charter creating two companies: the Virginia Company of London (for the southern territory between roughly 34° and 41° north latitude) and the Virginia Company of Plymouth (for the north). The London company, led by figures including treasurer Sir Thomas Smythe, Bartholomew Gosnold, Edward Maria Wingfield, and others, aimed to establish a colony that would yield profits from precious metals, timber, naval stores, and possible passage to the Pacific, while securing English claims against Spanish expansion. Investors purchased shares at £12 10s each. The charter established a council in England and authorized a local governing council in the colony. Detailed instructions directed the settlers to select a defensible inland site with deep water access, avoid open exposure to Spanish ships, search for gold and the Northwest Passage, and treat local inhabitants carefully while asserting English sovereignty.

The Voyage of 1606–1607

On December 20, 1606, three ships departed London: the Susan Constant (flagship, approximately 100 tons, commanded by Captain Christopher Newport), the Godspeed (Captain Bartholomew Gosnold), and the smaller Discovery (Captain John Ratcliffe). The vessels carried roughly 104 to 108 settlers—gentlemen, artisans, laborers, and boys—plus about 39 mariners. No women traveled on the first voyage. Among the settlers was Captain John Smith, who was arrested en route on charges of conspiracy and briefly held. A sealed box containing the names of the colony’s council members was not to be opened until arrival in Virginia.

After stops in the Canary Islands and the West Indies for water and provisions, the fleet entered the Chesapeake Bay on April 26, 1607. On April 29 the settlers planted a cross at Cape Henry, claiming the land for England. They spent the following weeks exploring the James River (named for the king). On May 13, 1607, they selected a low-lying peninsula (later becoming an island through erosion) about 60 miles upriver. The site offered deep water close to shore for mooring ships, natural defenses on three sides against potential Spanish attack, and relative isolation from the open bay. The settlement was named Jamestown.

Construction of the Fort and Initial Leadership

The settlers immediately began building a triangular fort with three bulwarks mounting artillery. Construction of James Fort was completed by June 15, 1607. The sealed instructions named a council that included Edward Maria Wingfield (elected first president), Bartholomew Gosnold, Christopher Newport, John Martin, John Ratcliffe, George Kendall, and John Smith (who was seated after his release). Newport returned to England with the Susan Constant and Godspeed in late June 1607 for additional supplies and settlers, leaving the Discovery and about 100 men.

Almost immediately the colonists encountered local Algonquian-speaking groups. On May 26, 1607, an attack by several hundred warriors wounded ten settlers and killed two. Early relations mixed trade and skirmishes; some groups provided corn and other food, while others resisted English presence on their hunting and planting grounds.

Hardships of 1607–1609

The first summer and autumn brought severe mortality. Contaminated brackish river water, poor sanitation, summer heat, and inadequate food caused dysentery, typhoid, and other diseases. By autumn 1607 only about 38 to 50 men remained alive. Leadership disputes led to Wingfield’s deposition in September 1607; Ratcliffe became president. John Smith took an active role in obtaining food through trade and, when necessary, force, and in exploring the surrounding rivers. In December 1607, while on the Chickahominy River, Smith was captured by a hunting party and taken before the principal regional leader known to the English as Powhatan. Smith later recorded that he was released after a ceremony involving Powhatan’s daughter Matoaka (called Pocahontas by the English). He returned to Jamestown in early January 1608. A fire shortly afterward destroyed most of the fort and stores.

Newport returned with supplies and about 100 new settlers in January 1608. Smith conducted two major explorations of the Chesapeake Bay in 1608, producing maps and reports that he sent to England. He was elected president of the council in September 1608. Additional resupply ships arrived in 1608 and 1609, bringing the population temporarily higher, though mortality remained high. A multi-year drought (roughly 1606–1612) reduced local food supplies for both the English and neighboring groups, increasing pressure on trade.

The 1609 Fleet, the Starving Time, and Near Abandonment

In 1609 the Virginia Company received a second charter that strengthened central authority and appointed a single governor. A large resupply fleet of nine ships carrying about 500–600 passengers under Sir Thomas Gates sailed from England. A hurricane in July 1609 wrecked the flagship Sea Venture on Bermuda; survivors later built two small vessels from the wreckage. The remaining ships reached Virginia with reduced numbers and disorder. John Smith, injured by a gunpowder explosion, returned to England in October 1609.

With leadership weakened and English demands for food increasing, local groups under Powhatan restricted trade and launched attacks, beginning the First Anglo-Powhatan War. During the winter of 1609–1610—the “Starving Time”—the colonists, reduced to roughly 200–300 at the outset and confined largely within the fort, suffered extreme privation. Contemporary accounts by George Percy and William Strachey describe the consumption of horses, dogs, rats, leather, and, in documented instances, human remains. By May 1610 only about 60 survivors remained.

The Bermuda survivors under Gates arrived in two small ships in late May 1610 and found the fort dilapidated and the survivors near death. Gates ordered the abandonment of Jamestown. On June 7–8, 1610, as the survivors sailed down the James River, they met the incoming fleet of Thomas West, twelfth Baron De La Warr (Lord Delaware), the new governor-for-life, with supplies and several hundred additional settlers. They returned to Jamestown and reoccupied the site.

Recovery and Expansion under Martial Law, 1610–1614

De La Warr imposed military discipline and directed offensive expeditions against nearby groups that had participated in the siege. He departed for England in 1611 due to illness. Sir Thomas Dale arrived in May 1611 as high marshal (later deputy governor) and enforced the Lawes Divine, Morall and Martiall, a strict code with capital penalties for a wide range of offenses. Dale specialized labor, strengthened fortifications, and founded new settlements: Henrico (near the falls of the James River) in 1611 and Bermuda Hundred. Population rose with continued arrivals; by late 1611 roughly 750 people lived in the colony.

In April 1613 Captain Samuel Argall captured Pocahontas while she was visiting the Patawomeck. She was brought to Jamestown, instructed in Christianity, and baptized Rebecca. On April 5, 1614, she married the settler John Rolfe. The marriage, accepted by Powhatan, helped conclude the First Anglo-Powhatan War and initiated several years of relative peace.

Economic Transformation and Institutional Foundations

John Rolfe had begun experimenting with a milder strain of tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum) obtained from the West Indies. By the mid-1610s the crop proved commercially viable and became the colony’s principal export. Tobacco cultivation expanded rapidly along the James River, encouraging private landholding and the importation of labor.

The Great Charter of 1618 reformed company governance, instituted the headright system (50 acres of land for each person whose passage was paid), and authorized a representative assembly. On July 30, 1619, Governor Sir George Yeardley convened the first General Assembly at Jamestown, consisting of the governor, his council, and elected burgesses from the plantations—the first representative legislative body in English America.

In late August 1619 the English privateer White Lion (Captain John Colyn Jope) arrived at Point Comfort with “20. and odd Negroes,” Africans taken from a Portuguese vessel bound for New Spain. Governor Yeardley and merchant Abraham Peirsey exchanged provisions for them; some were brought upriver to Jamestown. A few days later the Treasurer arrived with a smaller number of additional Africans. These individuals, primarily from the Ndongo region of West Central Africa, were the first recorded Africans in the English Virginia colony. Their status was initially that of servants, though the legal framework of lifelong hereditary slavery developed later. A March 1620 census recorded 928 people in the colony. By early 1622 the population had risen to approximately 1,200–1,400 amid the tobacco boom. Of the roughly 6,000 people who sailed to Virginia between 1608 and 1624, only about 3,400 survived.

Also in 1619 the company sent approximately 90 women to encourage family formation and permanent settlement.

The 1622 Attack and Subsequent Years

On March 22, 1622, coordinated attacks by forces under Opechancanough (who had become the principal leader after Powhatan’s death in 1618) struck English plantations and settlements along the James River. Approximately 347–400 colonists—about one-quarter of the total population—were killed. Jamestown itself was warned in advance by a young Indigenous convert living among the English and escaped direct assault. The English responded with retaliatory raids that destroyed villages and crops, beginning a decade of intermittent warfare known as the Second Anglo-Powhatan War.

High mortality, the 1622 losses, and ongoing financial difficulties prompted King James I to revoke the Virginia Company’s charter on May 24, 1624. Virginia became a royal colony under direct Crown administration. The existing assembly structure continued under royal governors, beginning with Sir Francis Wyatt. The 1624/5 Muster, ordered by the Crown, produced the first detailed census of households, arms, and provisions. Settlement expanded farther up the James and its tributaries. Tobacco production increased, and additional shipments of African laborers arrived, including a group of about 100 in 1628.

By 1630 Jamestown remained the seat of government and principal port. The colony had grown into a tobacco-exporting agricultural society with private plantations, an elected assembly, and a population that continued to increase through immigration despite recurrent disease and conflict. English expansion into surrounding lands persisted, and hostilities with the remaining groups under Opechancanough continued until a tenuous peace was negotiated around 1632.