With relatively little movement of the water caused by the mixture of salt and fresh water, sewage which washed into the river stayed to spread typhoid fever and dysentery, as it did in the Thames. The high salt content of water taken when the tide was rising also may have literally poisoned the men, making them too lethargic even to dig a well for fresh water. Those that were eventually dug were shallow and probably contaminated, like the river. But the ships kept on coming, filled with new settlers, and the people kept on dying. Soon malaria, spread by marsh- bred mosquitoes which had fed on infected European blood, also began taking a heavy toll.
Some historians say that as many as six colonists died for every one that survived.
These figures include the nearly 350 settlers killed in the 1622 massacre, when the Indians finally lost patience, for the ships and men never seemed to stop coming. At least half of the earliest colonists died of water-related diseases at Jamestown. The English assumed that the river would sustain them, without any effort on their part to know it as intimately at the Indians had. Perhaps they were blinded by their own myth of a golden river created solely to serve their needs and lust for wealth.