Jamestown Colony

“He who does not work, shall not eat.” This is a very famous quote written by John Smith during his stay at Jamestown. He saw that the colony wasn’t doing so good and that by September half of the settlers were dead, so he took control over the colony and made some good and not so good contributions. He observed that none of the colonists thought they were going to do anything when they got to this new land. But he realized that in order for this settlement to be successful, the colonists were going to have to work hard and not look for gold. But a bad contribution he made to this colony was that he kept getting the colonists to invade the nearby Native Americans. This made the Indians very upset with the colonists therefor the Indians invaded

So they set up an assembly in the colony. Landowners elect the representatives for the House of Burgesses. Each of the little settlements that are outside of Jamestown choose two burgesses. This was the first time that the settlers got to choose their government representatives. The first meeting was in Jamestown in 1619 and lasted for about 3 days and the assembly will meet once a year. The House of Burgesses had a lot of power, they could pass laws whenever the want to and the governor can veto laws as well. This government made the colonists feel like this was the first step toward self-government and that the land was finally feeling like it was theirs.

Bacon’s Rebellion happened after the House of Burgesses was created. This event was proposed by Nathaniel Bacon. He was an owner of a large apartment in the Virginia Colony. And when Indians attacked a man who worked for him, Bacon grew angry with the Governor because the government would not help to protect the western land from the Indians. So he got together an army to fight the Indians. Bacon’s army attacked and killed hundreds of Indians and then they marched on to Jamestown and burned it. This rebellion was the largest uprising in colonial America and England’s king was very mad from the