Jamestown

10 Key excerpts on "Jamestown"

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  Archaeologies of Placemaking

  Monuments, Memories, and Engagement in Native North America

  • Patricia E Rubertone(Author)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  CHAPTER 9Jamestown’s 400th Anniversary

  Old Themes, New Words, New Meanings for Virginia Indians

  Jeffrey L. Hantman

  INTRODUCTION

  This chapter examines the commemoration of the 400th anniversary of the founding of the Jamestown colony and the ways in which some events and programs surrounding this anniversary were engaged by, and appropriated by, American Indians in Virginia. The anniversary of the establishment of the Jamestown colony has been observed with celebratory or commemorative events every 50 years since 1807. What has been remembered and promoted at Jamestown is a story of American origins in the South. Jamestown was the place where the first permanent English-speaking colony was established on the continent that would eventually be largely an English colony. It is remembered as the place of the first representative democratic government in America, and a place where successful maritime commerce based on tobacco cultivation and export took root. Early Jamestown has also been remembered as a place of tragedy and loss for the colonists, many of whom died from starvation, violence, and disease in the earliest years of the colony. For the colonists, such tragedy lends a heroic dimension to the story as they overcame these traumatic events to become the first English colony that persevered and survived.

  For the Native people of the region, the Algonquian-speaking Powhatans and their neighbors, Jamestown was not the first colonial intrusion, but it was the one that survived and began the loss of land appropriated by the expanding colony and a demographic collapse far greater than any other seen in the Southeast in the early colonial era (Rountree 1990; Wood 1989). The memories of those processes, the beginnings of the ultimate loss of sovereignty by the late seventeenth century (Rountree 1990), and the conflicted and competing memories concerning Pocahontas’s role in the Jamestown story, are among the themes that Indigenous people want heard. Overlaying that is the memory of the role Indians played in helping the colony to survive its first years. With their presence at “the origin” noted by all, and their voice invited and heard clearly in the commemoration of 2007, Virginia Indians are incredulous that they are still in an uphill battle to receive federal recognition. They want that story told above all (see Virginia Indian Tribal Alliance for Life 2008; Waugaman and Morreti-Langholtz 2000).

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  Colonial North America and the Atlantic World

  A History in Documents

  • Brett Rushforth, Paul Mapp(Authors)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  6 Virginia DOI: 10.4324/9781315510330-6

  Envious of Spain’s American wealth, and fearful that growing Spanish power would jeopardize English security, the English crown started in the 1580s to support American colonial ventures. Beginning with a failed attempt on Roanoke Island, off the coast of present-day North Carolina, the English eventually established their first permanent settlement at Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607. The documents in this chapter discuss the origins of English colonial settlement in North America, concentrating on Virginia’s tumultuous early years.

  6.1 A Plan for English Colonization of North America*

  * Richard Hakluyt, “Discourse on Western Planting, Written in the Year 1584” in Documentary History of the State of Maine, ed. Charles Deane (Cambridge, 1877), vol. 2: 3–5.

  Written in 1584 to convince Queen Elizabeth I to support North American colonization, Richard Hakluyt’s “Discourse on Western Planting” represents one of the earliest and most coherent expressions of England’s New World ambitions. The following selection is an extended table of contents serving as a summary of the book’s major points. Hakluyt, an elder cousin who shared his name, and a small group of wealthy investors that included Sir Walter Raleigh, hoped to profit both from English trade and from anti-Spanish piracy conducted from England’s new American colonies. Shortly after Hakluyt’s work was published, the queen granted Raleigh the first English license to settle in North America

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  In the Words of Our Founders

  ...and other Historians, Philosophers, and Statesmen

  • Tullius(Author)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.

    (Publisher)

  But by 1614, he was back at the expedition-game, traveling and mapping the coast lines of present-day Maine and Massachusetts and naming the area “New England.” However, the return trip was cut short after he met up with pirates in the Azores off the coast of Portugal and found himself imprisoned. Amazingly, he escaped and made it back to England where he decided to take up his pen. Even after this tumult of a journey, he was still determined to return again to the area. The following year he published his work, Description of New England (1616), which proved quite effective in rallying others to invest and colonize the newly found area, including the Virginia Company, the king, and the Puritans. At the news of the Jamestown massacre, in 1622, he volunteered to go back to the region to settle scores, but the Virginia Company declined the offer. As for the actual settlement of Jamestown, it received a new charter, in 1612, (resulting in a much-needed influx of capital to further its stability and growth), which firmly established its own elective Assembly and allowed it to become an example for other colonies throughout the remainder of the 18 th century. However, as a result of Bacon’s rebellion, in 1676, and a destructive fire, in 1698, Jamestown died on the vine and was forced to relocate to present-day Williamsburg. Today, Jamestown attracts tourists from around the United States that includes both a theme park and a replica of the Susan Constance, one of the original ships of the armada. British colonialism had three primary goals: First, to bring Christianity to the inhabitants of the New World —at least it made this claim in the original Charter of 1606. Second, was to locate a passage to the Orient which, after countless expeditions proved fruitless. Third, to harness the natural resources for the enrichment of others which proved more successful than the previous two

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  British Colonial America

  People and Perspectives

  • John A. Grigg(Author)
  • 2008(Publication Date)
  • ABC-CLIO

    (Publisher)

  Farther away, in the Carolinas, resi- dents were more concerned with local issues revolving around land sales and court systems than with geopolitical issues. And for the thousands of colo- nists who did not see themselves as English there would not even have been a sense of satisfaction at the triumph of “their” way of life. In a similar fashion, though using 1607 is not as problematic, it, too, ig- nores much of the story of colonial America. Leaving aside, for the moment, the existence of Native Americans long before 1607, beginning with James- town ignores a great deal of important, and relevant, 16th-century activity. Fishermen from various European countries, including England, were active along the northern coasts of North America by the 1530s. Mariners, again including some Englishmen, sailed even farther north seeking a Northwest Passage to Asia. The Spanish placed a short-lived colony on the Chesapeake in the 1570s. Humphrey Gilbert set forth to establish a colony in North America in 1583, although his plans were ended when his ship sank and he drowned. Finally, Walter Raleigh actually planted an English colony on Roanoke Is- land, only to see it disappear within a handful of years. Colonial America, then, has a much more nebulous beginning sometime in the 16th century (and champions of the Vikings may even dispute that date). However, even if we use the argument that 1607 marked the beginning of permanent British settlement in North America, we still run the risk of ob- scuring an important distinction in the founding of various colonies. Although Virginia was established with the hope that colonies would prove sustainable and profitable, Pennsylvania was founded in 1681 with the knowledge that colonies could succeed. This is not to suggest that there was no common ground among at least some of the colonies. A visitor to Massachusetts, Con- necticut, and New Hampshire would have seen little substantial difference among the three.

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  The Southern Colonies in the Seventeenth Century, 1607--1689

  A History of the South

  • Wesley Frank Craven(Author)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • LSU Press

    (Publisher)

  CHAPTER III

  Jamestown

  I T IS not always possible to speak with certainty regarding the Jamestown settlement. Some of the more pertinent records of the English government have been irreparably lost by fire. Official minutes of the proceedings of the Virginia Company itself are known to exist only for the years following 1618.1 The story of the colony prior to that time must be pieced together from sources that are not only fragmentary but are frequently given over to special pleading and personal recrimination. No other period of American history has so lent itself to the inclination of some writers to read into the record whatever interpretation appeared at the moment to serve best the national or sectional interest. It has been used to demonstrate the fallacies of communism, and more recently in attempts to establish the point that fascism has also been tried in this country and found wanting. The ease with which these obviously misleading views of the period have attained wide popularity suggests the difficulty scholars have experienced in presenting a true picture.

  Unquestionably, the central theme of Virginia’s early history is the pursuit of that national interest which the Hakluyts had placed at the very heart of their program for American settlement. It is proper to emphasize the newly-awakened interest of the great merchants of London and their growing influence in the company under the leadership of Sir Thomas Smith, London’s greatest merchant prince. Indeed, the significance of this first chapter of our history can be fully comprehended only by giving close attention to the role of the merchants and particularly to the usages borrowed for management of the enterprise from the experience of England’s leading mercantile community. But in this necessary emphasis lies grave danger of overemphasis and the risk that a narrow view of the merchants’ interest may distort a chronicle of epic proportions. Membership in the London Company was by no means limited to the merchants; moreover, such men as Smith, whose activity in behalf of England’s trade ranged from the Spice Islands and India in the East to Virginia and Hudson Bay in the West, were more than mere tradesmen. The Virginia Company, like the East India Company, must be considered in terms of the large purpose it sought to serve. Called into existence when the state chose not to assume the lead in empire building, it can be understood only as an instrument for the achievement of national ends.

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  A History of Virginia Literature

  • Kevin J. Hayes(Author)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  part i Colonial Virginia chapter 1 The Literary Culture of Jamestown Karen Schramm The American Dream began in Virginia, a land originally stretching from Spanish Florida to the cool and rocky region Captain John Smith dubbed “New England.” Virginia proved a place of unparalleled wonder. From the 1500s on, all eyes were riveted upon America, that magnificent parcel of the New World promising so much. “Earth’s onely Paradise,” poet Michael Drayton gushed in “To the Virginian Voyage.” 1 When one thinks of the adventure awaiting the English on the shores of the Chesapeake, one likely conjures a sentimental image of cross-cultural romance, pulsing between a dashing knight in his mid-twenties and a forest maiden of twelve or thirteen: Captain John Smith and Pocahontas. There is so much more to Jamestown, though, than Disneyesque visions of joy. Virginia was packaged for eager consumers – those original American dreamers. Long before Pocahontas drew breath, Virginia beckoned, captivating hearts and minds. In England, people struggled to earn a living and sought in vain to secure space. Beset by social stratification, they saw no way to improve their lot. England depended on other countries to supply com- modities they desperately desired: everything from lumber for construction to silk for fine clothing to citrus and oils and spices for cooking. There must exist a fresh, untrammeled land somewhere that could satisfy their hunger for space, progress, and independence. That place was America. Whereas England seemed crowded with vagrants, sullied by disease and dissension, and inadequate to meet dreams of improvement, Virginia stood ready to cater to a person’s every need. The English had thrilled to Sir Thomas More’s vision of a Utopia, located somewhere in the Atlantic, a realm of ease, harmony, and success. With every explorer’s return, the legend of and longings for a fabulous environment unlike anywhere else grew.

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  A Concise History of the United States of America

  • Susan-Mary Grant(Author)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  They did not stay long. Reconnoitering the shore, they were chased back to their ships by the locals. Yet Hakluyt had issued them with instructions for where best to establish their colony, and by the following month they had selected the site, sixty miles inland on the newly named James River, which they named Jamestown. From the first, the colony struggled. The indigenous Algonquians, ruled by Pow- hatan, were understandably suspicious and, at times, overtly aggressive, but that was not the greatest threat that the Jamestown colony faced. Its main problem in its first few years was starvation, which, given the 30 A Concise History of the United States of America natural abundance previously described by Barlow, Hakluyt, and Hariot and repeated in such promotional documents as Robert Johnson’s Nova Britannia: Offering most excellent fruites by Planting in Virginia (1609), was the last thing its promoters had expected. Johnson had promised an “earthly paradise” that was “commend- able and hopeful every way,” boasting an “air and climate most sweet and wholesome, much warmer than England, and very agreeable to our natures.” Granted, he admitted the existence of “wild and savage people” who “have no law but nature,” but these were, he assured the reader, “generally very loving and gentle” and would readily “be brought to good, and would fain embrace a better condition.” Above all, Johnson reinforced the message brought back from previous voyages, that the “land yieldeth naturally for the sustentation of man, abundance of fish, both scale and shell: of land and water fowls, infinite store: of deer, kain and fallow, stags, coneys, and hares, with many fruits and roots good for meat.” There were, in addition, “valleys and plains streaming with sweet springs, like veins in a natural body.” 7 In the midst of such abundance, who could possibly want for anything? The answer was simple enough, even if the reasons behind it were harder to understand.

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  What Happened? An Encyclopedia of Events That Changed America Forever

  [4 volumes]

  • John E. Findling, Frank W. Thackeray, John E. Findling, Frank W. Thackeray(Authors)
  • 2010(Publication Date)
  • ABC-CLIO

    (Publisher)

  Landing in Virginia in May , the colonists founded a settlement at Jamestown,  miles up the James River. From the start, Jamestown was wracked by disease and internal dissension. Unlike Smith, who at the age of  was already a tough and expe- rienced captain, most of the settlers were ill prepared for the serious business of estab- lishing a colony. They had come expecting to make their fortunes through the discovery of gold and silver and were unwilling to work to feed and defend themselves. As a later settler observed, the colonists “would rather starve in idleness . . . than feast in labor.” Smith quickly emerged as a natural leader by virtue of his energy and resourceful- ness. He traded with the Powhatan Confederacy for corn to feed the starving settlers and went on several voyages to explore the Potomac and Rappahannock rivers and the Chesapeake Bay. On one expedition, undertaken in December , Smith and seven companions were ambushed by Native Americans, and Smith was taken prisoner and brought before their chief, Powhatan. According to Smith, he was saved from death through the intervention of Powhatan’s -year-old daughter, Pocahontas. In this and subsequent dealings with the Native Americans, Smith showed himself a shrewd strategist. He drove a hard bargain and generally got what he wanted through bluff and a show of force but very little bloodshed. Upon his return to Jamestown in January , Smith found that rival leaders had assumed control. Held responsible for the deaths of two of his men, he was arrested, tried, and sentenced to hang. Only the timely arrival of a supply-laden English ship, with a high official on board (who restored Smith as a leader of the colony), saved Smith from the gallows. The following fall, Smith managed to defeat his rivals and get himself elected presi- dent of Jamestown’s governing council. He soon put the colony under what amounted to martial law.

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  The Jamestown Project

  • Karen Ordahl Kupperman(Author)
  • 2009(Publication Date)
  • Belknap Press

    (Publisher)

  The fleet, commanded by Captain Christopher Newport, arrived in Virginia after a stop in the West Indies at the end of April 1607. The 108 colonists, whose ages ranged from fifty-seven to nine, selected their site up the James River on land belonging to the Paspaheghs, Paquiquineo/Don Luís de Velasco’s people, and began to build their settlement in mid-May. They paid close attention to parts of their in-structions: George Percy wrote that their ships were “moored to the Trees in six fathom water,” so clearly they were on a deep river. 9 And Captain John Smith asserted that their chosen site was “a verie fit place for the erecting of a great cittie.” 10 Other requirements were less easy to gauge, and Jamestown was to prove an unhealthy location. Trouble arose almost immediately. The royally appointed Virginia Council in London had tried an innovative approach to governing the colony. In previous colonies such as Roanoke the sponsors had ap-pointed the governor and council, and those were known to the set-tlers before they embarked. In this case the London council appointed the council for Virginia but did not make its choices known. Instead the settlers were given a sealed box containing the councilors’ names; once they had reached America and opened the box, then the named councilors would elect their president, who would act as governor. Un-Jamestown’s Uncertain Beginnings B 217 til the new government was known and sworn in, Newport, the Vir-ginia Company admiral, would have supreme command. It was an in-teresting plan that might have helped to build solidarity, but it did not work out as hoped. Six men were named to the council that would govern once Newport had departed: veteran explorer Bartholomew Gosnold; Captain John Ratcliffe (whose family name was actually Sicklemore); Edward Maria Wingfield, who was elected the first presi-dent; Captain John Martin; Captain George Kendall; and Captain John Smith.

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  The Jamestown Project

  • Karen Ordahl Kupperman(Author)
  • 2009(Publication Date)
  • Belknap Press

    (Publisher)

  8

  These “Instructions given by way of advice,” with their tone of grim realism, reflected study of previous colonial attempts and the pitfalls they had encountered; some backers had been involved in other ventures. Hopes for converting Indians and forming a harmonious relationship with them would come in the future, even in the midst of hostile and tense times; for now the Virginia Company focused on getting the colony established in a good location and without advertising its vulnerability.

  The fleet, commanded by Captain Christopher Newport, arrived in Virginia after a stop in the West Indies at the end of April 1607. The 108 colonists, whose ages ranged from fifty-seven to nine, selected their site up the James River on land belonging to the Paspaheghs, Paquiquineo/Don Luís de Velasco’s people, and began to build their settlement in mid-May. They paid close attention to parts of their instructions: George Percy wrote that their ships were “moored to the Trees in six fathom water,” so clearly they were on a deep river.9 And Captain John Smith asserted that their chosen site was “a verie fit place for the erecting of a great cittie.”10 Other requirements were less easy to gauge, and Jamestown was to prove an unhealthy location.

  Trouble arose almost immediately. The royally appointed Virginia Council in London had tried an innovative approach to governing the colony. In previous colonies such as Roanoke the sponsors had appointed the governor and council, and those were known to the settlers before they embarked. In this case the London council appointed the council for Virginia but did not make its choices known. Instead the settlers were given a sealed box containing the councilors’ names; once they had reached America and opened the box, then the named councilors would elect their president, who would act as governor. Until the new government was known and sworn in, Newport, the Virginia Company admiral, would have supreme command. It was an interesting plan that might have helped to build solidarity, but it did not work out as hoped. Six men were named to the council that would govern once Newport had departed: veteran explorer Bartholomew Gosnold; Captain John Ratcliffe (whose family name was actually Sicklemore); Edward Maria Wingfield, who was elected the first president; Captain John Martin; Captain George Kendall; and Captain John Smith.

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