Posted on 03/18/2015 6:31:00 AM PDT by TurboZamboni
The early American settlers called it "the starving time," and accounts of the winter of 1609-1610 were so ghastly, and so morbid, that scholars weren't sure if the stories were true. George Percy, then president of the English settlement of Jamestown in Virginia, wrote that settlers ate horses, then cats and dogs, then boots and bits of leather, and, finally, one another. "One of our colony murdered his wife, ripped the child out of her womb and threw it into the river, and after chopped the mother in pieces and salted her for his food," wrote Percy, who then ordered the man executed. "Now whether she was better roasted, boyled or carbonado'd (barbecued), I know not, but of such a dish as powdered wife I never heard of," added the famed settler John Smith.
(Excerpt) Read more at twincities.com ...
Scalping was an Indian practice, it was not introduced by our families when they arrived here.
It sure is. How about trapping?
And nowadays if you want to find a bear, just leave a bee hive unguarded. In the unlikely event no bear arrives -- eat the honey!
gotcha’
Plymouth was founded mainly as a refuge for religious freedom.
Jamestown was for-profit from day one.
It won’t be long and I’ll have a few of those myself.
>>Too many people have this wild belief they could take off and survive in the woods hunting, fishing, and gathering plants.<<
It’s easy for a week or 3; or until the can opener breaks, whichever comes first. LOL
Exactly. Then again, Jeff Dahmer might have been starving, he needed a snap card.
One can make what one wants of historical incidents, and can distort them. I'll accept the incident, but I'm not aware of anything to support Jamestown settlers ate 14-year-old girl. No evidence of a party. Like ascribing Dahmer to Milwaukee and Gacy to Chicago. So many Democrats, I'll resist that temptation.
The Starving Time at Jamestown in the Colony of Virginia was a period of starvation during the winter of 1609–1610 in which all but 60 of 500 colonists died.
The colonists, the first group of whom had originally arrived at Jamestown on May 14, 1607, had never planned to grow all of their own food. Their plans depended upon trade with the local Powhatan to supply them with food between the arrivals of periodic supply ships from England.
Lack of access to water and a relatively dry rain season crippled the agricultural production of the colonists. Also, the water that the colonists drank was brackish and potable for only half of the year. A fleet from England, damaged by a hurricane, arrived months behind schedule with new colonists, but without expected food supplies.
On June 7, 1610 the survivors boarded ships, abandoned the colony site, and sailed towards the Chesapeake Bay, where another supply convoy with new supplies and headed by a newly appointed governor, Thomas West, Baron De La Warr, intercepted them on the lower James River and returned them to Jamestown. Within a few years, the commercialization of tobacco by John Rolfe secured the settlement’s long-term economic prosperity.
There is scientific evidence that the settlers at Jamestown had turned to cannibalism during the starving time.
Source: Wikipedia
Yes. There have been deranged individuals at all times, in all places.
-JT
“It’s easy for a week or 3; or until the can opener breaks, whichever comes first. LOL”
Or until the AC quits working in the RV.
Oh here we go, the usual glorification of the Pilgrims who came a dozen years after Jamestown and had the benefit of the bitter lessons learned there. Even on an internet thread hundreds of years later their prideful spawn will continue to try to denigrate Jamestown’s history of being the first colony. Typical.
The Starving Times are a well known part of early Jamestown history and I’m surprised to see this presented as if it were controversial. The land chosen for Jamestown turned out to be an inhospitable malarial swamp unsuitable for agriculture and only 60 of the 500 colonists survived the 1609-10 season.
Colonization is really hard and colonials were on their own without support. They might as well have been on the Moon. The Virginia Company investors back in London were slow to send the help that the colonials actually in Virginia were begging for.
But despite all the death and even cannibalism the Virginia colony survived, and they celebrated several Thanksgivings well before the pretentious glory hogs who stopped for a beer run up in Massachusetts began claiming everything of importance for themselves.
I’m going to guess that you didn’t cheer when the NE Patriots won the Superbowl.
Um no
Very likely.
JAMESTOWN: 1609-10: “STARVING TIME”
GEORGE PERCY ____ A TRUE RELATION of the Proceedings and Occurances of Moment which have happened in Virginia from the Time Sir Thomas Gates shipwrecked upon the Bermudes anno 1609 until my departure out of the Country which was in anno Domini 1612
*
London: 1624
Excerpts
http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/pds/amerbegin/settlement/text2/JamestownPercyRelation.pdf
Ha. Good point, although I didn’t think of it at the time. Usually I pay them little attention until their insufferable revision of early American history is involved.
Pffft...well, they can try to denigrate the Jamestown settlers in favor of the Pilgrims. It won’t wash.
The English colonists who settled Jamestown landed at Cape Henry, Virginia, where they erected a wooden cross, held a prayer service, and dedicated the continent to the service of Jesus Christ and the spreading of the Gospel.
Folks up north can look down their noses at them as a “very different type of people” and smear them as being unGodly, but facts bear out the truth.
Wikipedia
Freepers
God love em
I think 75% mean well
But so easily misled
It’s always been this way
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