The Starving Time

The Starving Time

Constance Lewis

The starving time was the winter of 1609-1610, when fractured leadership, food storages, and a Powhatan Indian warriors killed two colonist of James Fort. From the beginning, the colony had struggled to keep food supply. Trade with Virginia Indian tribes was low because a seven year drought stressed food for everyone in that region. Captain John Smith had a little success trading European goods for corn the first two years. However, Captain John Smith’s tactics angered the tribal people.

Aware of food storages, Virginia Company sent nine ships with enough food and colonist to last through the winter. But the shipment was damaged and scattered by a hurricane. The biggest ship, the Sea Venture, was wrecked on an Island of Bermuda with most of the food supplies and leaders. In mid-summer some of the ships made it to Jamestown with few supplies and 300 colonists.

Captain Smith had been badly injured by an explosion of gunpowder and forced to return to England. George Percy became president of council and faced a combination of little food supplies and orders from Chief Powhatan that warriors should attack livestock found outside the fort or any colonists. Percy later wrote that “Indians killed as fast without (the fort) as Famine and Pestilence did within.” Percy set rations of half a can of meal a day, this would get them halfway through the winter. He wrote that to satisfy “Crewell Hunger,” some went into the woods looking for “snakes and serpents, and dig the earth for saline and unknown roots,” but those people “were cut off and saline by the salvages.”

Starvation had made the colonist weak which lead them to get sick with typhoid and dysentery. The colonist ate butchered horse and shoe leather brought from England the summer before the ill-fated fleet. Percy wrote, “Then having fed upon horses and other beasts as long as they lasted, we were glad to make shift with vermin, as dogs, cats, and mice.” It was charges of...