Jamestown -- the birth of a nation 400 years ago

Yahoo (AFP) ^ | 29 April 2007 | by Jocelyne Zablit

[Thinkin' Gal]

Jamestown -- the birth of a nation 400 years ago

The replica Jamestown ships, The Susan Constant, center, Godspeed, right, and Discovery ply the waters of Hampton Roads as they make their way to Virginia Beach to participate in the celebration of the 400th anniversary of the founding of Jamestown, Va., Tuesday, April 24, 2007. The centerpiece of the 18-month commemoration of the 400th anniversary of America's first permanent English settlement is almost here after a decade of planning. About two-thirds of the tickets for the 'America's Anniversary Weekend' extravaganza May 11-13 remain available; 31,587 had been sold as of April 19. (AP Photo/Steve Helber)

by Jocelyne Zablit
Sun Apr 29, 6:11 PM ET

JAMESTOWN, United States (AFP) - When 104 men and boys sailed across the Atlantic 400 years ago to become the first permanent English settlers in the New World, little did they know that their odyssey would give birth to history's biggest superpower.

The small group of high-born, but ill-prepared colonists who set up camp along the James River on May 14, 1607 on a swampy, mosquito-infested swath of land in Jamestown, were seeking gold and a water route to the Orient.

Instead they found famine, disease, drought and hostile natives whose fate would forever be altered by the Jamestown settlement, the 400th anniversary of which is being celebrated this year.

"The settlement of Jamestown is a tremendous legacy," Jeanne Zeidler, executive director of "Jamestown 2007," the committee organizing the celebrations, told AFP. "This is the true story of America.

"Jamestown is the story of some very good people and some people who weren't always so good and ... people who learned to live together and sometimes fought each other."

The Jamestown colony, located in the eastern state of Virginia and generally upstaged in the nation's memory by the Mayflower pilgrims who arrived to Plymouth, Massachusetts, 13 years later, also laid the groundwork for America's principles of representative democracy and free enterprise.

The highlight of the quadricentennial celebrations will be a visit by Britain's Queen Elizabeth II on May 3 and 4, followed by three days of festivities on May 11-13 that will include stage productions, a ceremonial sailing by replicas of the three ships that transported the settlers and a concert by a 1,607-member choir and an orchestra of 400 musicians.

The queen, who will be accompanied by the Duke of Edinburgh, also attended the 350th anniversary events in 1957 which marked her first visit to the United States as a monarch.

US President George W. Bush is also due to attend the ceremonies which have been 10 years in the planning.

But amid all the pomp and circumstance surrounding a date that marks the birth of a nation, some, especially Native Americans and blacks, are questioning whether there is much to celebrate.

For Native Americans, 1607 marks the beginning of their downfall and for African-Americans, Jamestown symbolizes the beginning of slavery in America with the arrival of the first African slaves in 1619.

"1607 marks the beginning of the English taking our land away from us," said Chief Bill Miles, who heads the Pamunkey Indian tribe in Virginia, which existed when the Jamestown settlers arrived and whose members have refused to take part in the 400th anniversary festivities.

"We are certainly proud to be Americans ... but we don't feel like it's something to celebrate or commemorate the fact that the settlers basically took our land away from us," Miles told AFP.

Of the estimated 15,000 American Indians who lived in the area near the English settlement in 1607, all but about 1,500 died within a century, most from disease or in battle with the settlers.

"When I ride though these roads here I see that only one or two percent of the people are Indians and there are all these other people," said Chief Ken Adams, who head the Upper Mattaponi tribe. "Four hundred years ago there was only us."

No Native American from the time of the English colonists is better known than Pocahontas, whose dealings with the settlers has formed the basis of many legends and a factually incorrect Walt Disney movie.

In a bid to avoid controversy and show consideration, organizers of the anniversary have toned down their wording to describe the event as a "commemoration" instead of a "celebration" and are going out of their way to include blacks and Indians in the festivities.

"We now tell the story of Jamestown as the place where the people of three cultures came together, not only the English," said Mike Litterst, spokesman for the Colonial National Historical Park.

"Certainly those three cultures didn't join hands and come together to join a society.

"But it is the contribution of all three that helped Jamestown survive and ultimately created the character of today's America."

[okie01]

Live by the sword, die by the sword. A more powerful tribe arrived.

The simple truth of the matter.

[SlowBoat407]

Peregrin and Mary? Weren’t they hobbits?

[EternalVigilance]

LOL...

[PhilipFreneau]

>>>Powhatan could have wiped out the Jamestown colony at the outset but thought the English would be useful to him in his wars with other Indian tribes. Powhatan’s brother later did launch a massacre which tried to exterminate the English settlers.<<<

My 11th g-grandfather, Rev. Samuel Maycock, was killed in the 1622 massacre. Another 11th g-grandfather, Richard Pace, was credited with saving the colony of Jamestown from being totally wiped out by the Indians during the massacre. But the credit really goes to an Indian named Chanco who Richard had befriended. Chanco was supposed to kill Richard, but instead warned him of the impending massacre.

[Thinkin' Gal]

Fun history lesson, thanks! BTW, wikipedia is even more blunt:

>>>Hiatt tried to *kill* it, but it kept coming back<<<

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_delicious

:-)

[Verginius Rufus]

Pocahontas (Rebecca) married John Rolfe (the man who first introduced tobacco growing at Jamestown)...she had one child by him before she died in England on a visit there. She was very young when she knew John Smith and he went back to England pretty soon, so they didn’t have any children in common. It might be possible to be descended from both of them if you are descended from a descendant of John Smith by someone else who marrried a descendant of Pocahontas, but I don’t know if John Smith had any children.

[mewzilla]

Jamestown's uneasy birthday

Snort.

[EternalVigilance]

Well before she was kidnapped and eventually married Rolfe, when Smith was still in Jamestown, there were several years when she, though still a teenager, could have had children, and when she and Smith were in close proximity. Very close. Some would say that they cohabited, or that according to Indian custom, were married.

And, when you read the accounts of Pocahontas in England, just before her death, when she encountered Smith, whom she had thought dead, she sure looks and sounds like a jilted lover.

I’ve looked at the question carefully, and while I certainly can’t prove it, I’ve found nothing at all in the historical accounts to rule it out either.

[vzevm0ka]

Thanks. Keep me on your ping list. I enjoy history.

[thiscouldbemoreconfusing]

bump

[VegasBaby]

As a lineal descendant of John Rolfe and Pocahontas myself (they were my 15th generation grandparents), I’ve done research regarding the relationship between her and John Smith. From what I’ve read, Pocahontas regarded John Smith in more of a fatherly manner than as a lover, given he was significantly older than she was. It wouldn’t be unusual to interpret her words as loving him, since she had such a high regard for him. I guess we’ll never know for sure, though.

[Verginius Rufus]

I caught part of a C-SPAN rebroadcast of a talk by Avery Chenoweth, author of Empires in the Forest: Jamestown and the beginning of America. I missed the beginning, but he seemed to be saying that without Pocahontas, the settlement at Jamestown wouldn't have survived, and thought that Pocahontas had saved John Smith's life. It sounds like a valuable book. He said there are plans to make a movie based on it.

[VegasBaby]

That’s useful info. Thanks! I’m quite fascinated with the dynamics of the Jamestown settlement. I wish there was more documented history of what actually occurred there since there seems to be a plethora of speculation and a sometimes gross distortion of what actually went on there (e.g. Hollywood’s version of events).

I, too, have read that Pocahontas did, in fact, save Smith’s life, but I know there are conflicting accounts of that as well. What little is known about her seems to support that she was instrumental in helping the Jamestown settlement survive. Also, it is suggested that her marriage to John Rolfe (and their son, Thomas) helped maintain a certain level of peace between the Algonquins and the English settlers for a period of time.