Jamestown Colonist George Percy
Presented here in Mark Nicholls’ transcription, is, as Nicholls says, “a relentless catalog of woe and misery.” Percy recounts~they “ digge upp deade corpes outt of graves to eate them.”
Percy composed it in 1625, thirteen years after returning to England, apparently referring a now-lost diary. In part a defense of Percy’s presidency during the 1609-10 Starving Time, the manuscript remained among his family’s private papers for more than three centuries, and not printed until 1922. Nicholls worked from the only original copy, now in the Elkins Collection of the Free Library of Philadelphia.
PARTIAL TRANSCRIPT- DESCRIBES MURDER AND CANNIBALISM
“Now all of us att James Towne beginneinge to feele the sharpe pricke of hunger w[hi]ch noe man trewly descrybe butt he w[hi]ch hathe Tasted the bitternesse thereof. A worlde of miseries ensewed as the Sequell will expresse unto yow, in so mutche thatt some to satisfye their hunger have Robbed the store for the w[hi]ch I Caused them to be executed. Then haveinge fedd upour horses and other beastes as longe as they Lasted, we weare gladd to make shifte w[i]th vermin as doggs Catts Ratts and myce all was fishe thatt Came to Nett to satisfye Crewell hunger, as to eate Bootes shoes or any other leather some Colde come by and those beinge Spente and devoured some weare inforced to searche the woodes and to feede upon Serpentts and snakes and to digge the earthe for wylde and unknowne Rootes, where many of our men weare Cutt of and slayne by the Salvages. And now famin beginneinge to Looke gastely and pale in every face, thatt notheinge was Spared to mainteyne Lyfe and to doe those things w[hi]ch seame incredible, as to digge upp deade corpes outt of graves and to eate them. And some have Licked upp the Bloode w[hi]ch hathe fallen from their weake fellowes. And amongste the reste this was moste lamentable. Thatt one of our Colline murdered his wyfe Ripped the Childe outt of her woambe and threwe itt into the River and after Chopped the Mother in pieces and sallted her for his foode, The same not beinge discovered before he had eaten p[ar]te thereof. For the w[hi]ch Crewell and unhumane factt I adjudged him to be executed the acknowledgm[en]t of the dede beinge inforced from him by torture haveinge hunge by the Thumbes w[i]th weightes att his feete a quarter of an howere before he wolde Confesse the same.”
25 page First hand recount of the horrors of Jamestown by George Percy-
https://www.history.org/foundation/journal/winter07/A%20Trewe%20Relation.pdf
