During the winter of 1609-1610, English colonists at Jamestown, Virginia, faced extreme famine after supply ships failed to arrive and relations with local Powhatan tribes deteriorated. Settlers resorted to eating horses, dogs, cats, rats, mice, boot leather, and, according to archaeological and historical evidence, human flesh including a young girl's remains. This 'Starving Time' reduced the population from around 500 to about 60 survivors, highlighting the brutal realities of early colonial settlement in North America amid environmental challenges and poor planning.

The horrors of Jamestown's famine inspired colonial literature and later American narratives of survival and resilience. Accounts by George Percy and others influenced depictions of hardship in early American poetry and prose, shaping themes of endurance in works by poets like those in the Puritan tradition. It contributed to the mythos of American exceptionalism and frontier grit, echoed in later literary explorations of hunger and cannibalism in survival stories, influencing how poets framed human desperation and cultural clash.