Jamestown Colonists Resorted to Cannibalism

It doesn't say in the article but the sound of the cannons they had helped scare away invasions. If it wasn't for Jamestown, Va History for the US may have been very different...

"Increasing demands for food from nearby Indian tribes, coupled with severe drought conditions, caused relationships with the Powhatan Indians—a powerful chiefdom that extended across much of Virginia’s coastal region—to deteriorate.

The colony’s leader, Captain John Smith, who had been wounded in an explosion, left with the fleet on its return trip to England, leaving Jamestown rudderless.

By November, the Powhatans launched a war against the English, laying siege to Jamestown and cutting the colonists off from outside help. “Conditions became increasingly desperate,” Horn said.

At first the settlers ate their horses, then their dogs and cats. Jamestown residents also ate rats, mice, and snakes, according to a firsthand account by George Percy, who became the colony’s temporary leader after John Smith left.

Percy writes that some colonists ate their boots, shoes, and any other leather they could find. Others left the fort to search for roots in the woods, but were killed by Powhatan warriors."

"Jamestown endured and colonists kept coming. "They kept their foothold and kept the Spanish from claiming all of North America," Horn said."