What were Jamestown's 4 major problems?

Answer 1

• Disease (The harsh winter that killed around half of the men)
• Lack of organizational skill (ex. not having set Religious practices as they did in Britain, sending over only mean, not being well prepared in general)
• Greed (especially in the gold industry)
• Some ill relations with the Indians (although the first Thanksgiving was mostly peaceful, some problems arose)

I hope that those helped! I am an APUSH student, so I do feel pretty confident in those reasons, but feel free to check me!

The settlers in Jamestown did not celebrate the first Thanksgiving with the Indians - The Pilgrims did in Plymouth, Massachusetts a number of years following Jamestown. The first colonists in Jamestown were men who had 3 missions

1. Convert the Indians to Christianity
2. Find Gold and
3. Discover the Northwest Passage to the Pacific Coast

In exchange for their work in these areas and maintaining the colony, they received food, clothing, tools, weapons, and a percentage of the eventual profits. However, they failed in all three of their missions and Jamestown proved to be a deathtrap. The reasons it was a deathtrap:

• Although the location was easy to defend and bring supplies too, it was also a dense Forrest area that was malaria prone.
• The James River, their source of water, contained more than 5 times the safe level of salt in it.
• The river was also polluted as the colonists dumped their bodily waste and trash there. Therefore, many became ill with dysentery and typhoid.
• They also had inadequate nutrition leading to famine the first 12 years.
• High Death Rate:Only 38 of the original colonists survived their first year, and only 50% of replacement colonists would survive more than a year after arriving to the colony.

Jamestown essentially only failed in their three missions.