<P> Among the colonists who survived the Third Supply was John Rolfe, who carried with him a cache of untested new tobacco seeds from Bermuda, which had grown wild there after being planted by shipwrecked Spaniards years before . In 1614, Rolfe began to successfully harvest tobacco . Prosperous and wealthy, he married Pocahontas, daughter of Chief Powhatan, bringing several years of peace between the English and natives . However, at the end of a public relations trip to England, Pocahontas became sick and died on March 21, 1617 . The following year, her father also died . Powhatan's brother, a fierce warrior named Opchanacanough, became head of the Powhatan Confederacy . As the English continued to appropriate more land for tobacco farming, relations with the natives worsened . </P> <P> Due to the high cost of the trans - atlantic voyage at this time, many English settlers came to Jamestown as indentured servants: in exchange for the passage, room, board, and the promise of land or money, these immigrants would agree to work for three to seven years . Immigrants from continental Europe, mainly Germans, were usually redemptioners--they purchased some portion of their voyage on credit and, upon arrival, borrowed or entered into a work contract to pay the remainder of their voyage costs . Along with European indentured servants, around 20 African slaves arrived in Jamestown in 1619 . These slaves were captives taken from a ship headed for Mexico . Though these Africans started in Jamestown as slaves, some were able to obtain the status of indentured servant later in life . </P> <P> In 1619, the first representative assembly in America convened in the Jamestown Church, "to establish one equal and uniform government over all Virginia" which would provide "just laws for the happy guiding and governing of the people there inhabiting ." This became known as the House of Burgesses (forerunner of the Virginia General Assembly). Initially, only men of English origin were permitted to vote . On June 30, 1619, in what was the first recorded strike in Colonial America, the Polish artisans protested and refused to work if not allowed to vote ("No Vote, No Work"). On July 21, 1619, the court granted the Poles and Slovaks equal voting rights . Afterwards, the labor strike (the first "in American history") was ended and the artisans resumed their work . Individual land ownership was also instituted, and the colony was divided into four large "boroughs" or "incorporations" called "citties" by the colonists . Jamestown was located in James Cittie . </P> <P> After several years of strained coexistence, Chief Opchanacanough and his Powhatan Confederacy attempted to eliminate the English colony once and for all . On the morning of March 22, 1622, they attacked outlying plantations and communities up and down the James River in what became known as the Indian Massacre of 1622 . More than 300 settlers were killed in the attack, about a third of the colony's English - speaking population . Sir Thomas Dale's development at Henricus, which was to feature a college to educate the natives, and Wolstenholme Towne at Martin's Hundred, were both essentially wiped out . Jamestown was spared only through a timely warning by a Virginia Indian employee . There was not enough time to spread the word to the outposts . </P>

What was the foremost reason for establishing english colonies in america