In the sixteenth century, Londoners imagined Virginia as the Garden of Eden, where game was so plentiful that one had only to step forward and pick it up.
Strangers in Paradise: The British Colonies
After Columbus, Spanish adventurers swept on through Central and South America, Mexico, and the Caribbean. The spears and poisoned arrows of native peoples proved no match for Spanish muskets, horses, cannons, and—most deadly of all—smallpox germs. In 1565, the Spanish made the first permanent European settlement in North America in what is now St. Augustine, Florida.
England defeated the Spanish navy in 1588, clearing the way for British settlement in the New World. But British attempts to start a colony sputtered until, in 1607, three shiploads of men and boys reached Chesapeake Bay in the land they called Virginia. Described as a paradise by the few who had seen it, coastal Virginia was also the heart of a mighty Indian nation. Settlers were immediately set upon by aggressive warriors quite unlike the gentle Tainos.
But the stubborn Europeans had superior weapons. Within a few decades there was a necklace of British and French colonies along the Atlantic coast of North America. A tide of young people—some orphans, others stolen from or sold by their families—sailed from Europe and Africa to develop the new land with their elders.