THE ULTIMATE
On this day, May 14th 1607, the first permanent English settlement was established at Jamestown, Virginia, the beginnings of the United States of America.
The English settlers departed from the banks of the Thames in London in Deecember, and it took their three ships the Susan Constant, Godspeed and Discovery, four months to cross the Atlantic Ocean and make landfall on the coast of North America. Once on the coast they explored the area, and decided to build a settlement on an island in what they called the James River, which was away from the Atlantic Ocean, navigable (where boats could be used) and was easy to defend. The site was uninhabited by the Powhatan Native Americans, as it was seen as a swamp of mosquitoes unsuitable for farming. On unsuitable ground for farming, and with little agricultural experience amongst the settlers, whose main aim was hunting for gold, the settlement struggled to survive. Supplies from the local group of Powhatan Indians, ensured their survival, though relations with the Powhatan went through phases of friendship and warfare. The settlement also saw its settlers replaced by more colonists coming from England, and within four years the local Native Americans had been wiped out through warfare. Pocahontas the daughter of the Native American Chief of the region, befriended the English settlers, is said to have saved John Smith one of the seettlers' leaders from being executed; been taken hostage and converted to Christianity, and married John Rolfe, before travelling with Rolfe to England. As she was to travel back, with Rolfe and their son, Pocahontas died at Gravesend on the Thames, and was buried there in the local churchyard - where a statue of her now stands. John Rolfe began the successful cultivation of tobacco at the settlement, which became its main crop. The settlement was almost abandoned in 1610, but the leaving colonists were ordered to return, when more ships of settlers arrived from across the Atlantic Ocean, In many ways the Jamestown settlement that established the British colony of Virginia, and served for many years as its capital, began numerous features of the United States of America, its Anglo-Saxon (English/British) culture, such as its language, and the political system of rights and democracy. Whilst, it also led to th losses experienced by the Native American nations, as well as the use of slavery to grow plantation crops.
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