<Tr> <Td> <Ul> <Li> </Li> <Li> </Li> <Li> </Li> </Ul> </Td> </Tr> <Ul> <Li> </Li> <Li> </Li> <Li> </Li> </Ul> <P> The History of Virginia begins with documentation by the first Spanish explorers to reach the area in the 1500s, when it was occupied chiefly by Algonquian, Iroquoian, and Siouan peoples . After a failed English attempt to settle Virginia in the 1580s by Walter Raleigh, permanent English settlement began in Virginia with Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607 . The Virginia Company colony was looking for gold but failed and the colonists could barely feed themselves . The famine during the harsh winter of 1609 forced the colonists to eat leather from their clothes and boots and resort to cannibalism . The colony nearly failed until tobacco emerged as a profitable export . It was grown on plantations, using primarily indentured servants for the intensive hand labor involved . After 1662, the colony turned black slavery into a hereditary racial caste . By 1750, the primary cultivators of the cash crop were West African slaves . While the plantations thrived because of the high demand for tobacco, most white settlers raised their families on subsistence farms . Warfare with the Virginia Indian nations had been a factor in the 17th century; after 1700 there was continued conflict with natives east of the Alleghenies, especially in the French and Indian War (1754 - 1763), when the tribes were allied with the French . The westernmost counties including Wise and Washington only became safe with the death of Bob Benge in 1794 . </P> <P> The Virginia Colony became the wealthiest and most populated British colony in North America, with an elected General Assembly . The colony was dominated by rich planters who were also in control of the established Anglican Church . Baptist and Methodist preachers brought the Great Awakening, welcoming black members and leading to many evangelical and racially integrated churches . Virginia planters had a major role in gaining independence and in the development of democratic - republican ideals of the United States . They were important in the Declaration of Independence, writing the Constitutional Convention (and preserving protection for the slave trade), and establishing the Bill of Rights . The state of Kentucky separated from Virginia in 1792 . Four of the first five presidents were Virginians: George Washington, the "Father of his country"; and after 1800, "The Virginia Dynasty" of presidents for 24 years: Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and James Monroe . </P>

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