The Starving Time

The winter of 1609-1610 was the darkest stretch of early Jamestown. The Powhatan Confederacy laid siege to the fort, cutting off food and killing anyone who left to forage. With Captain John Smith shipped home after a gunpowder injury, leadership fell apart.

Trapped and freezing, colonists ate rats, shoe leather, and finally the dead. In 2013, archaeologists confirmed it: the skull of a roughly 14-year-old girl bore clear butchering marks. Of the 500 who entered that winter, only 60 were alive when resupply ships reached the river — just as the last survivors were boarding to abandon the colony.