| Jamestown | |||
|---|---|---|---|
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| Airdate | January 23, 2020 | ||
| Curriculum | Social Studies | ||
Jamestown launched in BrainPOP Social Studies January 23, 2020.
Summary[]
Parts 1 & 2[]
A gold digger spots Moby in the sand. Moby scares the gold digger away.
Rita answers a letter about Jamestown, Virginia. Rita and Moby are talking about Jamestown, Virginia. At the end, Rita says "Find out why in Jamestown, Part 2!".
The plot continues with Rita and Moby having sandwiches at the beach together.
At the end, the people with metal detectors leave Moby alone. "You're welcome.", Rita says.
Appearances[]
Transcript and Quiz[]
Trivia[]
- At 10 minutes and 59 seconds, this is the 2nd longest BrainPOP movie ever aired.
- This is the only BrainPOP movie to be in 2 separate movies.
Quotes[]
Parts 1 & 2[]
- Rita: Find out why in Jamestown, Part 2!
- Rita: You're welcome.
FYI[]
Part 1[]
Unsolved Mysteries[]
When Jamestown was founded in 1607, it became the first permanent English colony in North America. But it wasn’t England’s first attempt to settle on the continent. Two decades earlier, Queen Elizabeth I granted a private adventurer named Sir Walter Raleigh permission to create an English colony in the Americas. In 1585 and 1587, Raleigh sent two separate groups of settlers to establish a colony off the coast of North Carolina (pictured). It was called Roanoke Island. Both attempts failed—and the second one ended with the complete disappearance of all 116 colonists!
Governor John White led a group of men, women, and children to Roanoke for the 1587 attempt. The voyage depleted their resources and the colonists were worried that they wouldn’t be able to survive the winter. White traveled back to England to secure more food and supplies. He told the colonists that if they planned to leave Roanoke during his time away, they should carve their destination into a tree trunk so he could find them. He also instructed them to carve a cross symbol if they were in danger.
It took White three years to return to Roanoke. There, he found the settlement totally abandoned! There was no trace of any of the colonists—including his granddaughter Virginia Dare, the first English child born in North America. And no tree bore a cross symbol, either.
The only clue as to what may have happened? The word “Croatoan” was carved into a wooden post, along with the letters “Cro” carved into a nearby tree. Croatoan was the name of an indigenous group in the area, the only one friendly with the settlers at the time. Some historians believe that the colonists joined the Croatoan people and assimilated into American Indian society. Others believe that the colony was wiped out by England’s colonial rival, the Spanish. And a third group thinks the settlers were killed by the supreme chief of the Powhatan, a nearby alliance of Native tribes. Either way, the fate of the Lost Colony of Roanoke remains one of the most famous unsolved mysteries today.
Etc.[]
By the end of the sixteenth century, Spain and France both had territories across North and South America. They’d formed trading posts, started settlements, and grown extremely rich from the land’s resources. Naturally, England wanted in on the wealth.
It took another 20 years, but England finally started to play catch-up. In 1606, Captains Christopher Newport and John Smith, along with nearly 150 men, set out for North America. The Virginia Company, which was funding the venture, made it clear that the men were to find gold. Their future in the so-called New World would depend on it! In 1607, they landed in what would become the first permanent English settlement in America: Jamestown, Virginia.
Newport and most of the others were happy to devote themselves to searching for riches. Smith, on the other hand, complained that the men spent more time hunting for gold than tending to their survival. Building a settlement was hard work, and many in their group were perishing from hunger and disease. Although Smith was not interested in the treasure hunt, he hoped the prospect of gold would attract more settlers and resources to Jamestown.
At last, their fortunes seemed to turn. In a creek on the Patawomeck tribe's land, Captain Newport spotted something sparkly: a deposit of sand with golden flecks. Newport was certain that it had to be gold dust! So, the colonists traded valuable goods to the Patawomeck people in exchange for the sediment. Newport and his men filled a ship with 1,100 tons of glittering sand, excited to show King James I back in London.
But the King had something the men in Jamestown did not: a skilled metallurgist. That’s an expert in identifying and extracting metals from minerals. The metallurgist confirmed that in all the sediment shipped over the Atlantic, not a pinch of gold dust could be found. The glittering flecks? They were bits of a mineral called iron pyrite, often referred to as fool's gold! Pretty to look at, but otherwise worthless.
Laws And Customs[]
England formed the colonies with one primary goal in mind: to make money. Yet prior to the 1650s, the American colonies traded commercially with England’s rivals—Spain, France, the Netherlands, and those countries' colonies. For a while, England was too busy with wars in Europe to care. But once those distracting wars ended, the British were ready to squeeze more money out of the colonies. Beginning in 1651, a series of laws called the Navigation Acts forced the colonies to trade only with England. And when King Charles II (pictured) came to power in 1660, he tightened up control even more. The last thing he wanted was for British colonies to support rival countries!
The Navigation Acts had a significant impact, but probably not in the way England intended. They hurt the colonial economies, forcing colonists to get creative to make ends meet. And as it turned out, there were loopholes to get around the new laws.
The only legal way for colonists to access goods from other countries was by purchasing them from England and paying a very high tax. So, many colonists turned to smuggling, sneaking in foreign goods illegally. Colonial ships sailed to France, the Netherlands, and the Spanish West Indies to load up on items. On the return trip, the goods were hidden below deck to get past the British customs agents. But in many cases, the agents were happy to let the goods through in exchange for bribes.
Back in the colonies, the smuggled items sold at a lower cost than heavily taxed British goods. Since smugglers took great care to hide their activity, it's difficult to track how much of it was taking place. It was estimated that more than £700,000 worth of goods was smuggled into the American colonies per year—the equivalent of $160 million in today’s dollars!
Saving a few bucks wasn't the only attraction of smuggling. It was also a political act: a way to resist laws that many believed were unfair. By the late seventeenth century, England largely stopped enforcing the Navigation Acts. But new taxes decades later would reignite the same resentments, fueling the fight for independence from England.
Did You Know?[]
The first decade of Jamestown’s settlement was a miserable one. Members of the Virginia Company arrived in 1607 expecting to find plenty of gold. When they didn’t, the settlers turned to growing crops. But the Englishmen weren't accustomed to the American soil and climate. Instead of a bountiful harvest, they got harsh weather, illness, and food shortages.
Settlers often worked only a few years before giving up and returning to England. If the colony was to have any hope of survival, it needed a permanent population. Company board members soon realized there was one way to keep Englishmen settled in Jamestown: wives. A handful of women had arrived in Jamestown as early as 1608, but the community needed more. The settlement’s very survival depended on them. If English women emigrated and married Jamestown's men, that would lead to stable family units and a growing population.
But there was a problem. Most Englishwomen had no interest in living in the disease-infested swamp of Jamestown. So, the Virginia Company made the prospect more enticing. First, all women willing to settle in Jamestown got free passage across the Atlantic. They also received clothing, bedding, and furniture—dowries to set up their marital homes. As the ultimate enticement, the women were granted their own plots of land. The deal was, after they married Jamestown men, the husbands would reimburse the Virginia Company for these costs. The debts were to be paid in tobacco crops. That’s why the first English women in Jamestown became known as tobacco wives.
For many poor English women, the Virginia Company’s offer was one they couldn’t refuse. Marrying and establishing a household required a lot of money. Domestic servants saved their wages for years in hopes of building a dowry. Marrying in the “New World” offered them a new life, complete with property and their pick of husbands. The first 90 tobacco wives landed in Jamestown in 1620, and were provided with food and housing until they chose a husband. While the women were never forced to marry, most became brides within three months of their arrival.
Being in such high demand, the women of Jamestown found themselves in a unique position of power. They enjoyed better legal rights than the women back in England. Married women could own property, and widows inherited more of their husbands’ estates than most seventeenth-century Englishwomen. Better rights and freedoms meant that tobacco wives could grow their own fortunes. Their contributions to Jamestown's survival ensured the “New World” was not entirely a man’s world.
Way Back When[]
Jamestown was saved by tobacco. But growing tobacco brought challenges. It required lots of laborers. And with starvation and warfare killing off much of the settler population, there were few people left to work the fields!
One solution was slavery. The first West African slave ship arrived in Jamestown in 1619. But only the wealthiest planters could afford to buy slaves, and it was often a poor investment: Brutal living conditions resulted in a steep death rate for enslaved laborers.
So, planters turned to indentured servitude. They would pay for men’s travel expenses from England in exchange for three to seven years of labor. When their term of indenture was up, a servant was freed, and entitled to 50 acres of land.
It seemed like a good deal, especially for poor Brits seeking a new start. Planters benefited, too: The headright system entitled them to those 50 acres until the servant finished his term. And since harsh conditions killed many servants before they were freed, the property often remained in the hands of the planters.
Eventually, disease rates declined, and more indentured servants started surviving their terms. But when the ex-servants went to claim their 50 acres, they found that the rich planters already owned the best land. What was left was rocky and far from rivers, which made growing and transporting crops difficult. Plus, the farther west they moved, the more they clashed with the Native Americans who already lived there.
Then, a local trade dispute sparked a colony-wide war. After a planter named Thomas Matthew didn't pay what he owed to a group of Doegs, they stole his hogs. Matthew's men retaliated—but against the wrong group of Native people! Instead of raiding the Doegs, they mistakenly killed a dozen Susquehannocks. The Susquehannocks were long-time allies and trading partners of Virginia: Planters made big profits swapping metal tools for Susquehannock furs. But now the Susquehannocks struck back, killing several colonists. Governor William Berkeley hoped to smooth things over with diplomacy, plus a handful of forts and patrols to protect the frontier. He wanted to avoid another full-blown Indian war—and raising taxes again to pay for it. But a lot of the ex-servants were unimpressed with Berkeley's plans. According to them, he seemed to care more about the Indians' well-being than their own. In their opinion, the Indians were at the root of most of their problems. A rumor even circulated that Native magic had caused bad weather, ruining the recent tobacco crop. The farmers wanted action: They wanted to wipe out the Indians—all of them. So, they found a leader willing to defy the governor, and head up missions to slaughter Indians.
Son to a wealthy British merchant, Nathaniel Bacon came to Virginia in 1674. Bacon’s connections set him up well in the colony, with good land and a seat on the local council. But a Doeg raid that killed two of his workers inspired him to join the plight of the farmers. Ambitious and charismatic, Bacon stirred up the farmers’ anger and assembled a militia to slaughter Native Americans.
Berkeley's government had no success in stopping the rebellion. Soon, Bacon and 500 followers headed to the capital, where they demanded military support for their Native-killing raids. The governor assembled his own forces to meet the rebels and refuse their demands. During the tense stand-off, Berkeley bared his chest and challenged Bacon to shoot. Bacon didn't take the bait. Instead, he and his men turned their rage toward the capitol, burning down the statehouse.
Bacon's Rebellion was short-lived. Bacon died a month later. Soon after, Berkeley died, too. But the death of the two rival leaders didn’t solve the larger problem: There was no space in the colony for this growing class of poor ex-servants. Bacon’s Rebellion was a wakeup call to the ruling class about their threat.
The planters found a solution in a different labor source: enslaved Africans. A shift from indentured servitude to slavery had already been underway in Virginia. England’s economy had improved, which meant fewer British were signing on as servants. And more slave ships were arriving on Virginia’s shores. After Bacon’s Rebellion, a permanent, controllable workforce grew even more appealing to planters. The transition to slavery was sped up, and soon the institution boomed. Before Bacon's Rebellion, enslaved people made up 7 percent of the colony. A century later, 40 percent of the population of Virginia was enslaved. Slavery would come to dominate the American South for generations to come.
FYI Comic[]
Part 1[]
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