Today, we are going to learn more about Jamestown, England's first permanent settlement in the “New” World. Jamestown colony was founded in 1607 by a company called the Virginia Company. Chartered by King James I, the goal of the Virginia Company was to make profit for its investors, which it eventually did by planting and selling . Eventually, the Virginia Company was dissolved in 1624 when Virginia became a royal colony of Great Britain, the of the 13 original British colonies.

Last week, we learned that the Jamestown colonists almost starved to death because the Virginia Company had ordered them to find , but there was no gold in Virginia. Crazily enough, several of the Jamestown colonists viewed the search for gold as more important than planting crops – especially some of the gentlemen who viewed labor as beneath them. Eventually, Captain John Smith intervened, declaring that any colonists who did not work would not !

It’s also important to note that the Jamestown colonists were trying to settle on land. The Chesapeake Bay area was already settled by the Confederacy, a powerful alliance of about 30 Algonquian-speaking tribes around Chesapeake Bay. The most notable of the Powhatan people was a young woman known as . Her formal name was Amonute, and “Pocahontas” is actually a childhood nickname meaning “playful” or “mysterious.” While her actual birthdate is unknown, most historians agree that she was born between . As Pocahontas grew up, she would have been taught women's work of planting and harvesting vegetables, which was separate from men's work of hunting and foraging for food. Both were taxing and equally as both types of work benefited all of Powhatan society.