How Did Social Factors Affect Jamestown Settlement

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Hook (engage your reader) Jamestown had a rough start in the beginning of Blood on the River by Elisa Carbone. There were many reasons for the settlement to have trouble starting. It could have been the environmental factors, but look closely at how the social factors affected the Jamestown settlement, too. Introduce novel/topic In Blood on the River, colonists move to a settlement they call Jamestown. Yet, they had trouble getting started because the settlers did not cooperate well with one another. When people don't work well together causing events, it's called social factors. Claim So, Jamestown struggled to thrive because of the social factors, and not generally the environmental factors. Body Paragraph #1 Topic Statement …show more content…

Instead of trying to work with the Powhatan tribe and save and share food with each other, the colonists decided to fight for the dwindling food supply. Evidence "..the period coincides perfectly with bloody battles between the Indians and the English." (Shelter paragraph 19) Elaborate Because of this, it seems that the relationship between the two settlements is not healthy unless the other receives what they need. If it hadn't been for the settlers and their selfish needs, they would have acted differently by working with the Indians to attempt to gather food such as acorns or berries. Evidence "Smith records an unsuccessful attempt to trade goods for corn with the Indians'' (Shelter paragraph 20). The Indians have had some pressure put on them because they had to feed 2 populations to keep the colonists from getting irritated and killing some of the Indians. In "Rethinking Jamestown '', the text explains how some colonists were criticized for "poor planning, poor support" (Shelter paragraph 21). In this case, it seems that the social factors needed to be worked on more efficiently because of the miscommunication between the Indians and the colonists.