An Englishman, Pocohontas, Tobacco & Slavery

The Chesapeake Bay area today

The English, Italians and Spanish all sailed up the North American coast countless times at the end of the 15th Century and during the 16th Century, but no real effort was ever made to colonise it until 1585.

The first inhabitants of North America were nomadic hunter-gatherers who lived in small bands across the continent. Most of them migrated with the seasons in search of food and temperate locales. They built few permanent structures and tended to own land communally. At the time of European contact, many native people lived at the waters edge around cornfields and gardens of squash, beans and potatoes. For generations they prophesised that strangers from across the sea would come and destroy their people.

The first European colony was established on Roanoke Island just south of the Chesapeake in modern North Carolina, however it vanished mysteriously several years later. The Jamestown colony was founded in 1607 and local tribes under the powerful chief Powhatan warned the colonists that they would need to plant corn to sustain them through the cold months, when hunting and fishing were difficult. Few settlers had the inclination or skill to plant, tend, and harvest corn and as a result they verged on starvation for many winters. Low on funds and without direction or initiative, Jamestown was close to collapse.

At this time the British were paying big money for tobacco that ship captains purchased from planters in the West Indies. The Native Indians were already smoking tobacco, but it was not the same variety that was fetching high prices in Europe. An enterprising Englishman named John Rolfe joined the colony in 1609 and married Powhatan’s daughter Pocahontas five years later. Rolfe managed to obtain some seeds of the West Indian plants and cultivated them in the rich tidewater soil of the Chesapeake Bay. This was the beginning of a new cash crop for the colonists.

Beginnings Of The Slave Trade

Once the Indians had been driven off prospective plantation land and seeds had been planted, tobacco supply was limitless, but the labour supply was not. In the early colonial period, Europeans tried enslaving the Native Indians as a cheap source of labour, but many escaped back into familiar terrain. Some of the colonists eventually returned to England offering to pay passage for anyone willing to work on the tobacco plantations for several years (typically 5-7), in exchange for room and board. Tobacco plantations began to spread all along the shores of the southern Chesapeake and its tributaries. Thousands left England for Virginia seeking fortune and a new life, but the influx of people still did not meet the demand for plantation labour. The slave trade began.

In 1619 a Dutch merchant ship sailed into Jamestown full of indentured English servants to “sell” to local plantation owners striving to produce more tobacco. Onboard the ship were 20 Africans the captain had picked up on his travels. The Virginians bought these Africans together with the English. Due to their distinctive appearance and unfamiliarity with local language and terrain the Africans found it nearly impossible to escape their servitude, and planters soon realised that the Africans could be ruthlessly exploited beyond their agreed years of labour. As oversupply of tobacco began to lower prices and cut into profits, ruthless planters conspired to keep servants in bondage. From here the transistion to outright slavery was swift.

The slave trade reached its height in the 18th Century; yet its legacy continues to shape contemporary society throughout the Americas.

• Visit the Jamestown website and plan your visit, or make a virtual visit on The National Geographic website.
• Survival International has downloadable education packs on the ‘Jamestown Landings: 400 years on’.