The Jamestown Fiasco

Smith, the son of a yeoman, kept the colony going and dealtwith Indians. It is Smith who kept colony going byforcing people to work on harvesting until the Virginia Company came to take over theauthority. The colonists started to plant tobacco, and in 1617, ten years after the first landingin the Jamestown, they shipped their first cargo to England. The so-called Lawes Divine, Morall and Martiall, set thecolonists to work with military discipline and no pretense of gentle government. There was an extraordinary number of gentlemen, not tomention that gentlemen by definition, had no manual skill, nor could they be expected towork at ordinary labor. Jamestown settlers were unable to feed themselves because they were unwilling towork for food. When he was caught by Powhatan, it is known that he was saved byfair princess, Pocahontas. Even though the collective organization of labor in the colony wasalso part of early troubles, reorganization of 1609 changed it. It also did not even contemplate that the Indians would become a part of theEnglish settlement. The troubles of Jamestownhad been modified again and again until the discovery of tobacco, which is why it lastedwithout facing extinction. By the end of 1608 Smith was left alone incomplete control of the settlers. He divided the people into work gangs and made them alittle speech, in which he told them they could either work or starve. " When Smith told them that it's choice between working orstarving, the death rate dropped dramatically on later winter. It had been known from the Roanoke experience, that theIndians grew and smoked tobacco; and tobacco grown in the Spanish West Indies wasalready being imported into England.