Full disclosure: my background is in anthropology and it has been a while since I studied The Tempest. Forgive me if I misrepresent the play, but I may be able to provide some context for the situation in Virginia at the time.

Shakespeare is believed to have written The Tempest around 1610 or 1611. After the 1585-1590 failure of Roanoke, Jamestown was the next great hope for a permanent English presence on the Atlantic Coast. The settlement was founded in 1607 along a stretch of territory known as Tsenacommacah (densely inhabited land) to the Algonquian people living in the region. During the decade preceding English arrival, and partially as a response to the growing threat of the Spanish in Florida, a paramount chief named Powhatan/Wahunsenacawh allied more than 30 tributary groups into a large, powerful chiefdom. Powhatan/Wahunsenacawh received tribute from each of the allied chief/weroance, and could count on their military support, if needed.

The original Jamestown colonists, eager to cash in on the riches of the New World, did not thrive in the New World. They established the fort in a swampy area unfit for growing the necessary food, arrived too late in the season to plant crops, and faced the constant issue of organizing inhabitants into an efficient workforce. They quickly began to starve. Two thirds of the colonists died before resupply in 1608. Then, in the period known as Starving Time, 154 people out of 214 died during the winter of 1609-1610. Both primary documents and archaeological evidence testify to the horrible situation in Jamestown during Starving Time, where inhabitants resorted to cannibalism to survive.

Powhatan/Wahunsenacawh ritually integrated Jamestown into the Powhatan paramount chiefdom in 1607, and ceremonially appointed John Smith as weroance. Powhatan hoped to use the English as allies, both against the Spanish and inland enemies. Smith served as the primary intermediary with the Powhatan during the early years of the colony. He somehow managed to not only trade for much needed food, but also negotiate a highly tenuous peace between the English and the Powhatan. In 1609 a gunpowder accident required his return to England, and the simmering hostilities reached a full boil.

Without a skilled intermediary, and with the arrival of new land-hungry and aggressive colonists, the first Anglo-Powhatan War began in 1610. English colonists attacked invaded and attacked Paspahegh, a capital of one of the tributary nations allied with Powhatan, and killed over fifty people. The hostilities began to escalate, and it was only the marriage of Powhatan's daughter, Pocahontas, to John Rolfe in 1614 that another tenuous peace was established again.

The Tempest was written in the midst of this tumultuous period when Jamestown, and by extension the English colonial presence in the New World, transitions from hopeless folly to a mild threat in the region. The outpost only survived due to Powhatan assistance, but after Smith's departure the Jamestown leadership was less interested in diplomacy than aggressively imposing their will. Powhatan still valued the potential of the English as tributary allies, but there was a growing displeasure with English demands within his confederacy.

This brings us to Caliban. In the play he is subhuman, unable to control his base desires, and must be magically bound by Prospero to keep him from hurting Miranda. There is an obvious carry-over between the wild, subhuman depiction of Caliban and how the English perceived the inhabitants of the New World. In the play Caliban must do Prospero's wishes, and becomes the magician's tool instead of acting on his own desires. I do not know if Shakespeare intentionally mirrored the situation in Virginia, but he does reflect the mentality of English superiority over the savages as well as the desire to use Native Americans for English gain. I'm hesitant to make any further leaps, but I hope this helps contextualize the situation in Virginia in 1610-1611, even if I didn't provide the best of insight into The Tempest.

As a bit of a somber postscript, though we often inherit the myth of an invincible and superior English presence in Virginia (a myth many colonists desperately hoped to prove true), the permanence of the colony was continually in doubt. Jamestown was a tiny toe-hold in the shadow of a powerful Powhatan Chiefdom. Even after the arrival of new colonists, and a decade of development, the colony was almost driven back into the sea in 1622 during the Second Anglo-Powhatan War when nearly 1/3 of the English inhabitants were killed in a single day. The popular story may interpret the English as Prospero, inherently superior magician landing in a New World devoid of fully human life, but the reality is far more complex and fascinating.