The colonists in Jamestown ultimately survived by learning to cultivate tobacco, a popular trade item in Europe. Tobacco is something that is no longer new to the England by 1617 because it was introduced by the Columbus' sailors to the Europeans. There was a big market for the drug in England way back then and Jamestown also made its own set of addictive weed cultivated by the Spanish. It was James Rolfe, a Jamestown resident who started planting tobacco that caused the realization that tobacco can be grown in Jamestown to be exported to England.
