Talk:Starving Time

A fact from Starving Time appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 22 January 2007. The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that fewer than 100 of 500 colonists in the Virginia Colony survived the Starving Time during the winter of 1609-1610?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2007/January.

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Overall article quality

This article is generally pretty good, but it suffers from some terrible edits that are pretty clearly a result of some high school English class assignments or something. Just super low effort, POV, OR, speculative edits that really bring the overall quality down. I've removed a few particularly striking sentences, but there remains work to be done. 141.239.228.193 (talk) 02:24, 13 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Untitled

The article (and the "Did you know") both start out with "Less than 100... " . When I attempted to edit this (+), the text came up with the correct "Fewer than 100... " I can't imagine why this did not carry through immediately, as the editing tool promises.70.156.25.186 11:06, 22 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Lead section

The lead for this article contains more paragraphs than recommended by Wikipedia:Lead section, especially given the relatively short article length. This article would be improved by having a shorter, more concise lead. Mmoyer 20:50, 11 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I agree. I will be replacing the current lead with a shorter one, and moving remaining material into the body of the article as necessary. Baileypalblue (talk) 03:31, 9 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Biased portrayal of Powhatan Confederacy

The first sentence in this article indicates that the starvation of the settlers of Virginia Colony was a premeditated act perpetrated at the will and direction of the Powhatan Confederacy. I believe this is a biased view of the events. While the Powhatan Confederacy was certainly in favor of the English leaving the area, it is more accurate to state that they, too, were suffering from the drought of 1609 and had fewer resources to share. Not being inclined to encourage the English settlers, and being short of food themselves, they were no longer willing to trade food for goods in the manner they had previously been inclined to do. The deterioration of relations between the Virginia Colony and the Powhatan Confederacy was made a great deal worse by the food shortage both parties were experiencing. This, however, does not constitute "forced starvation initiated by the Powhatan Confederacy" as stated in the first sentence of this article. The starvation of the settlers was the result of poor planning (i.e. the erroneous assumption that the settlement didn't need to self sufficient, would be able to trade for food, and would therefore not need personnel with knowledge of farming and food storage included among its ranks), and the drought of 1609. The Powhatan Confederacy's increasing dislike of the English was a contributing factor, but it was not the cause of The Starving Time. The first sentence of this article is biased and inaccurate, and should be changed. If the writer's desire is still to lay the blame for this portion of American history on the Powhatan Confederacy, I would suggest that the following is more accurate and less overtly biased:

The Starving Time at Jamestown was a period of starvation in the Colony of Virginia which was exacerbated by the Powhatan Confederacy's desire to remove the English from Virginia.

The writer can then explore the impact of the Powhatan Confederacy's refusal to provide food for the colonists at that time as 'part' of the problem, but not the entire 'cause' of it.

Lunarmovements (talk) 18:06, 21 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Cannibalism

Added to the section that mentions possible cannibalism, as it has been confirmed to have occurred at least once.75.134.26.34 (talk) 18:20, 1 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]