Word: rivering
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...years. Not until the 1620s would the numbers be even. Part of this imbalance was due to the fact that there were local bugs, now unidentifiable, to which the local people had immunity but Europeans did not. The locals had long since learned to drink springwater rather than river water to stay healthy. The newcomers didn't look for springs and didn't bother to dig a well until early in 1609 and instead drank James River water, which was both brackish and polluted. Most important, in the colony's early years, which were especially dry, the Powhatan knew...
...they saw land. The three ships sailed into Chesapeake Bay and found, in the words of one voyager, "fair meadows and goodly tall trees, with such fresh waters running through the woods, as I was almost ravished at the first sight thereof." They picked an island in a river for a fortified outpost and named it after their king, James...
Many things did go wrong. The most pressing problem was sustenance. The first year, the settlers drank from the James River, succumbing to typhoid, dysentery and salt poisoning. Once they had dug a well they were able to drink safely, but what would they eat? Gardening and farming were fiendishly difficult. Studies of tree rings show that the Chesapeake was baked by drought during the first seven years of the colony. This meant they were dependent on bartering or seizing supplies from local Indians, whose own stores were depleted. The settlers who died of disease or starvation...
...colony flourished, its Powhatan neighbors became alarmed. Trading posts were one thing, permanent farms another. On March 22, 1622, the new leader of the Powhatan, Opechancanough, launched dawn raids on 28 plantations and settlements along the James River, killing 347 colonists, a quarter of the total population. Jamestown itself escaped, warned by an Indian boy who had converted to Christianity. "Besides them they killed," a survivor lamented, "they burst the heart of all the rest." Dispirited and disorganized, hundreds more colonists died the following winter, the second "starving time...
...Nantaquoud. He even offered Smith some nearby land. Smith instead returned to Jamestown, where his adversaries charged him with negligence in the death of two of his men killed by Indians. Smith was sentenced, again, to be hanged. Hours before he was to swing, Newport arrived up the James River with fresh settlers and supplies, intervening once more to spare Smith from the noose...