Jamestown was the first permanent English colony in North America, and it seemed to have been cursed. This was evident early on. After only a few short years of settling a Fort along the James River, several disasters caused cannibalism in the “Starving Time.”
The winter from 1609-1610 killed most of the colonists, and those who were to survive had to make some hard choices. Though alluded to in letters and diary entries, there was no evidence of cannibalism in Jamestown during this harsh winter until a skeleton named ‘Jane’ was discovered.
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What was The Jamestown Starving Time?
The Starving Time was a dark period in Jamestown history. Cannibalism became the last resort for ailing and hungry colonialists during the brutal winter of 1609. While mostly mentioned in diaries and letters, archeological evidence has revealed an awful truth in more recent times.
The Cannibalism: Trouble at Jamestown
During the spring of 1607, three English ships, the Susan Constant, the Discovery, and the Godspeed, arrived with 104 colonists from England. They sailed along the Chesapeake Bay before attempting to move farther inland along the James River.
They established the New World’s first permanent colony, Jamestown, on a narrow peninsula along the river.
It consisted of a fort, a storehouse, a church, and houses built with local wood. A sizeable spiked fence surrounded the fort for protection.
The colonists built their fort on marshy ground, meaning they were in the middle of a mosquito-infested swamp. But unfortunately, the soil was not good for growing crops.
Arsenic runoffs (from a tar pitch swamp) and human waste polluted the water. When the water in the original wells was tested, it was determined to have been too salty to drink in the summer. Due to the contaminated water, disease ran rampant throughout the colony in the first few years.
A Drought Contributes to Cannibalism in Jamestown
The colonists arrived in Virginia during a seven-year drought, the worst in the area for almost 800 years. In our modern time, Cedar tree trunks old enough to have been growing during the early 1600s were examined. Their rings were thick enough to show that the area suffered greatly from this drought.
Due to their inexperience in growing native crops and the drought, the colonists struggled with food and other resources. Their leader, Captain John Smith, managed to negotiate trades with the local Native American tribes, such as the Algonquian leader Chief Powhatan. Trading with the locals and depending on resupply ships kept the colony going until 1609 when the vessel before winter went down.
The drought in the area meant that the Native Americans had to focus on feeding their people first and could no longer help the colonists. Relations with the local tribes of the Powhatan Confederacy soon became hostile.
To further the issues facing the colonists, Captain Smith suffered a terrible gunpowder injury and had to return to England for medical treatment. He never returned to Virginia. The “Starving Time” began that winter. By the end of the winter of 1610, disease and starvation killed up to 80% of the colonists.
The Starving Time (1609-1610)
The winter of 1609-1610 became known as the “Starving Time,” as later mentioned in diary entries and letters. The marshland and poisoned water supply prevented them from growing crops. They also could not trade for food with the local tribes.
With no crops or trading partners, the colonists became desperate. They ate their horses, dogs, and food until even the rats and snakes in the area were gone.
In 1625, the governor of Jamestown, George Percy, wrote a letter during the “Starving Time” detailing what he witnessed.
He explained that they were glad to eat the dogs, cats, rats, and mice in the area after they had eaten their horses. They also ate their leather shoes and any other leather they could find. Some desperate people even dug up corpses to eat, and some even licked the blood that came from their weakened neighbors.
There had been references to cannibalism at this time but no physical proof. In 2012, the remains of a 14-year-old human girl were found in a debris pit with horse and dog bones. All carried the tell-tale sign of being butchered.
Forensic scientists at the U.S. Smithsonian Institute released a report detailing what could very well be the first instance of intentional cannibalism in an English colony.
The Discovery of ‘Jane’
Desperation can make even the most taboo of norms take the backseat to survival, which seems to be the case with Jane.
In 2012, she was discovered during a 20-year-long excavation of the fort by a team headed by William Kelso. Kelso worked from the Jamestown Rediscovery Project at Preservation Virginia. James Horn, the Vice President of research and historical interpretation at Colonial Williamsburg, also worked with Kelso’s team.
They had been excavating an old cellar that held the butchered remains of the bones of dogs, horses, and a partial human skeleton. Kelso discovered parts of a skull, lower jaw, and leg with butcher marks, just like the animal bones.
Who was “Jane?’
The team did an isotope analysis of her bones to discover proof that she had regularly eaten better food than most of the other colonists. Examining her dental remains and bones also showed evidence of a high-protein diet.
While she could have been a maidservant, the protein suggests she was a gentleman’s daughter and one of the colonists. Jane had probably arrived on one of the supply ships that came in 1609. While there was no evidence of murder, it seemed that other colonists horrifyingly scavenged her remains after she died of natural causes.
Cannibalism In Jamestown
Douglas Owsley, a physical anthropologist at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History in Washington DC, examined Jane’s remains.
Owsley’s experience comes from a mix of skeletons from archeological digs and ancient sites and from working with the FBI. He was one of the physical anthropologists who examined some of the victims of the 1980s serial killer and cannibal Jeffrey Dahmer.
He’s estimated to have examined over 10,000 bodies during his career. His experience meant he could reasonably accurately represent what had happened to ‘Jane’ by looking at the clues she had left behind.
Her Remains Held The Answer
All her remains (a skull, leg bone, and lower jaw) showed clear cleaver or ax marks. The marks on her head were consistent with a desperate but inexperienced butcher. The brain, tongue, cheeks, and leg muscles were consumed, with the brain being the first thing removed because it couldn’t be preserved and decomposed quickly after death.
The front of her skull has several cuts from attempting to get to her brain, and her lower jaw has cut marks, showing clear intent to remove all the flesh from her body. She must have been dismembered close to her death. There are several recipes for animal brains at this time, so her brain may have been prepared the same way.
Owsley could tell from the marks that the butcher was hesitant and made several weak hits to certain areas. The hesitance could be from an inexperienced butchering game and the fact they were cutting up one of their neighbors. Even in desperate times, cannibalism is still one of the worst Western taboos. It must have taken quite a strong will to survive to decide they had to eat a former neighbor.
Since the hostilities with the Native Americans meant the colony was under siege, most male colonists were killed if they ventured outside the fort’s walls. If true, that may indicate that the ones who butchered Jane were other women, explaining the cuts’ inexperienced and tentative nature.
He suspects that there were multiple butchers involved with Jane’s body because her leg cuts are more confident and precise than other cuts on her head.
Jane, The Face of Jamestown’s Starving Time
Archaeologists William Kelso and Owsley worked together and presented a program showing a reconstruction of Jane’s face. They used CT scanning and computer graphics to show Jane’s possible face for the first time in over 400 years. She was a pretty young girl, and it was sad to see her tragic fate in Jamestown.
Unfortunately, Jane probably wasn’t the only victim cannibalized, but there hasn’t been any evidence yet. It’s just a matter of time before more victims are found from the Starving Time.
Haunted Williamsburg
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References:
https://www.wired.co.uk/article/jamestown-cannibalism
https://www.history.com/news/evidence-of-cannibalism-found-at-jamestown
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/starving-settlers-in-jamestown-colony-resorted-to-cannibalism-46000815/