VSS Lesson 3: Hardships Lesson & Notes

Facing Problems and Solutions

Essential Standard:

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VS.3.e: The student will demonstrate an understanding of the first permanent English

settlement in America by describing the hardships faced by settlers at Jamestown and the
changes that took place to ensure survival. (PRS 1)

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Big Ideas

●Cause and Consequence: Understanding cause and
effect can help people solve problems and make
decisions. The ideas and actions of people and groups
have consequences and can shape events.

●Interdependence: People are dependent on, adapt to,
or change their environment.

Essential Questions
★How does culture impact people’s relationship with the
land?

★How do economic motives shape people’s choices and
experiences?

★How do people depend on other people and their
environment for survival?

Problems Arise in Jamestown
Heat, disease, rotting crops, misery, and death. That was
the fate of the first Jamestown settlers. The marshy soil
made planting difficult, and the drinking water was
contaminated—way too salty.

Just a few short months after the colonists arrived in
Jamestown, they were in trouble. By the autumn of
1607, there was hardly anyone healthy enough to build
a home or tend to a garden, and the Virginia
Algonquians were certainly not going to become
servants for a bunch of foul-smelling intruders.
Someone had to do something! In 1608 Captain John
Smith took charge of the colony.

Source: Five Ponds Press, Our Virginia, p.56

Multiple Choice

Who decided to take charge of the colony?

• John Rolfe

• Pocahontas

• John Smith

• King James I

“You must obey this
now for a Law, that

he that will not

worke shall not eate
(except by sicknesse
he be disabled)...”

John Smith, after being
put in charge of the
Jamestown colony, 1609

This painting depicts a victim being removed from the James Fort during the

Starving Time in the winter of 1609-10. It is a historical recreation of an

event that may have happened, according to written accounts.

Open Ended

What did you notice about the painting? and What are you wondering?

The Starving Time, 1609-1610

Aware of the food shortages, the Virginia Company sent a fleet of nine ships in July
1609 with new colonists and enough supplies to last through the winter. But the fleet
was scattered and damaged by a hurricane. The largest ship, the Sea Venture, was
shipwrecked on the Island of Bermuda with much of the supplies and leaders such as
Captain Christopher Newport, Sir George Somers, and Sir Thomas Gates. In
mid-August some of the ships arrived at Jamestown with 300 colonists and few
supplies.

Why might this have been a problem?

From: Jamestown Recovery, The Starving Time

Match

Match the following

• drought

• food shortage

• starving time

• no work, no food

very little rain

very little food

1609-1610

Captain John Smith

• very little rain

• very little food

• 1609-1610

• Captain John Smith

The Starving Time, 1609-1610

John Smith was badly injured by a mysterious gunpowder explosion and forced to return to
England in October. George Percy became President of the Council and faced the lethal
combination of dwindling food supplies and an order by Chief Powhatan that his warriors
should attack any colonists or livestock found outside the fort.

Percy calculated that meager rations of half a can of meal a day would get them only
halfway through the winter. He wrote that to satisfy their “Crewell hunger,” some went into
the woods looking for “Serpents and snakes, and to digge the earthe for wylde and
unknowne Rootes,”

From: Jamestown Recovery, The Starving Time

Multiple Select

What hardships did the colonists face?

• contaminated drinking water

• marshy land

• hurricanes

• food shortage

Open Ended

How could the colonists have avoided the starving time?