[tsomer]

They were close to the coast. Couldn’t they have fished?

By the way, just how often do those droughts occur?

[muawiyah]

There's a climatological cycle that let's us have big droughts somewhere in North America just about every 70 to 80 years. Sometimes the drought linger from one end to the other ~ sometimes they'll be short, sweet and last only a couple of years, or maybe only in one quadrant seriously. China follows the same pattern and they have records going back thousands of years regarding the drought cycle.

Regarding fishing, that's a rather salty diet. Their problem was fresh water ~ not fish; but game was in short supply; the Indians had moved upstream for fresh water and were a long way away from Jamestwn.

Little went on in the East Coast area until about 1620 ~ and then settlers came to many places, indians attacked, etc. Europe prepared to plunge into the 30 years war ~ just all sorts of stuff.