Early settlement account

This is an account from Captain James Smith in 1607, the narrative explains the struggles the English men had when settling on to the land. I chose this section of the writing as I felt it showed how much the settlers needed the natives to help them survive on the land and the kindness they gave to the men.

http://www.nationalcenter.org/SettlementofJamestown.html

‘While the ships stayed, our allowance was somewhat bettered, by a daily proportion of biscuit, which the sailors would pilfer to sell, give, or exchange with us, for money, sassafras, furs, or love. But when they departed, there remained neither tavern, beer house, nor place of relief, but the common kettle. Had we been as free from all sins as gluttony, and drunkenness, we might have been canonized for Saints; but our president would never have been admitted, for ingrossing to his private, oatmeal, sack, oil, aquavitse, beef, eggs, or what not, but the kettle; that indeed he allowed equally to be distributed, and that was half a pint of wheat, and as much barley boiled with water for a man a day, and this having fried some 26 weeks in the ship's hold, contained as many worms as grains; so that we might truly call it rather so much bran than corn, our drink was water, our lodgings castles in the air.
With this lodging and diet, our extreme toil in bearing and planting pallisades, so strained and bruised us, and our continual labor in the extremity of the heat had so weakened us, as were cause sufficient to have made us as miserable in our native country, or any other place in the world.’

‘But now was all our provision spent, the sturgeon gone, all helps abandoned, each hour expecting the fury of the savages; when God the patron of all good endeavors, in that desperate extremity so changed the hearts of the savages, that they brought such plenty of their fruits, and provision, as no man wanted...’

The first piece of writing explains that the president appears to be leaving his men to starve whilst working in the heat when he lives on a diet of meat and eggs. The second shows the kindness of the natives as they share their food with the working men. I think this reveals that the natives weren’t savages like the men first thought and that the real savage was the president who seemed to be only looking out for himself. The men seemed shocked by this gesture and thought that god was responsible for their change of heart.

Without this kindness from the savages the British settlers would have starved to death as some did before the natives came to their rescue, and would not have been able to create a settlement in American and wouldn't have what we have today.