The Chesapeake Bay was chosen by the Virginia Company because it was not inhabited by the Native Americans. It quickly became realized why the area was not inhabited. It was a swampy area that bred mosquitoes, thus subjecting many of the colonists to die of malaria. There was not very much game to hunt for food because it was such inhospitable land. Many of the settlers died of dysentery from drinking polluted water. The Algonquian Indians also were a deadly threat to the settlement, killing many of the settlers. In 1611, the colony had no economic viability, and most of the original settlers had perished due to disease, famine, and Indian attack.
One settler, John Rolfe, brought tobacco seeds from the Caribbean. He and many other settlers began growing and exporting the tobacco. The Jamestown Colony now had economic viability, which led Britain to send more settlers with new supplies. The newly arrived colonists found the conditions of the Colony terrible; therefore they set out to form a plan to rebuild the colony. Attacks against the Jamestown colonists began almost immediately when they arrived off of the ships that brought them across from Britain.
References: History of the Jamestown Settlement (1607–1699). (2012, May 23). Retrieved from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jamestown_Settlement_(1607%E2%80%931699)#The_Starving_Time Orange Revolution. (2012, May 24). Retrieved from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange_Revolution Steve York, H. M. (2010). Orange Revolution. New York, NY: York Zimmerman Inc. Timeline of the Revolutionary War. (2012, 5 24). Retrieved from ushistory.org: http://www.ushistory.org/declaration/revwartimeline.htm