Inventing

America
The 400th Anniversary of Jamestown

Th
.,
,
.'

. ,Ii"\"'
-pt'-
; .. --.,
~-

. ~ .:'
"'

THEY THOUGHT THEY WERE LOST.
The Susan Constant, the Godsperd
and the Discovery had sailed
§, from London on Dec. 20, 1606,
carrying 144 passengers and crew,
·· bound for Virginia. Howling winds
,,
i
pinned them to the coast of England for six
weeks. After crossing the Atlantic by a
southerly route and reprovisioning in the
West Indies, they headed north, expecting
landfall in the third week of April 1607.
Instead they found a tempest. For four days
they sounded, seeking offshore shallows in
vain. Then, at 4 a.m. on April 26, they saw
··i land. The three ships sailed into Chesapeake
Bay and found. in the words ofone voyager,
"fair meadows and goodly tall trees, with
•! such fresh waters running through the
woods, as I was almost ravished at the first
sight thereof.~ They picked an island in a
river for a fortilied outpost and named it
after their king, James.
, May is Jamestown's 400th birthday, and
Queen Elizabeth II, James I's great-great-
!
grtat·great-great-great·great·great·great·great·
;
· granddaughter, will be present to celebrate
the occasion. But it's worth remembering
i
!
that Jamestown was a giant gamble. The
trials were severe, the errors numerous, the
losses colossal, the gains, eventually, great.
!! Life in Jamestown was a three-way tug-of.
war between daily survival, the settlers'
,,; own preconceptions and the need to adapt
to a new world. Jamestown did not invent
America, but in its will to survive, its quest
! for democracy, its exploitation of both
! Indians and slaves, it created the template
; for so many of the struggles-and achieve-
; ments-that have made us who we are, It
,i contained in embryo the same contradic-
tions that still resonate in America today-
the tension between freedom and authority,
between public purpose and private initia·
tive, between our hopes and our fears.
Jamestown spawned four centuries of
myths. The wreck of a reinforcement ex·
pedition in Bennuda inspired Shakespeare's
magic play, The Tempest (161 1), complete
with Caliban, a savage aboriginal; a passage
in e of John Smith's many promotional
48
JAMESTOWN HISTOR~
tracts inspired a verse in Peggy
Lee's song Fever(1958}-~Cap­
lain Smith and Pocahontas had
a very mad affair." In reality,
Jamestown was a hardheaded
business proposition. The 104 En-
glish settlers who stayed when the ships
went home-gentlemen, soldiers, priva·
teers, artisans, laborers, boys (no women
yet}-were late entrants in the New World
sweepstakes. Spain had conquered Mexico
by 152 I, Peru by I5H. The mines disgorged
silver, and by the end ofthe 16th century,
Mexico City and Lima had universities,
printing presses and tens of thousands of
inhabitants. The Portuguese were harvest·
ing dyewood in Brazil, and the French were
trading for furs in Canada. Even the some-
what overlooked Chesapeake had seen
European passersby: Ihe Native Americans
were not unused to strangers with pale
skins and sailing ships.
But anyone's venture is special 10 him.
And the England of lames I and his prede-
cessor, Elizabeth I, suffered from over-
population and poverty. Pushing people
into other lands could oolve both problems
and even have a side benefit. As the Rev.
Richard Hakluyt, England'S premier geog·
rapher, put it, MValianl youths rusting
(from] lack of employment~would flourish
in America and produce ~ •
goods and crops that would 0 ::O~:;.
enrich their homeland. The To see an
notion was so prevalent Intera::tlYe
that it inspired a blowhard t=::n.
character in the 1605 play go to
tlme.com!
Eastward Hofto declare that Jarnlntown
all Virginia colonists had
chamber pots of~pure gold. ~
That would have surprised the lames-
town settlers, who faced an aTTay of chal-
lenges, all of them together crushing. It was
a project of the London Co., a group of mer-
chants wilh a royal patent: Imagine that
Congress gave Wal-Mart and General Elec-
tric pennission to colonize Mars. But of ne-
cessity, the d.:iy-to-day decisions were made
in Jamestown, and its leade.rs were always
fighting. Leaders who were incompetent or
"
 JAMESTOWS IllS TOR}
History comes .lIve Rqlimsojlhr lhrl'e ships rhlll amwd ill 1607,IIleSusan Constanl.lheGodspeed lind rhf Discovery, arc docked al rhe jllmestown
Stll/emm!, He lilling-histol]! sitrilisoamtaitls a Ibwhalan
unpopular-sometimes Ihe most compe-
lenl were the least popular-were deposed
on the spot. The typical 17th century ac-
count of Jamestown argues that everything
would have gOne well if everyone besides
Ihe author had not done wrong. Smith. for
instance, described his fellow coloniSts as
"len times more fil 10 spoil a common·
wealth than ... to begin one.~
Many Ihings did go wrong. The most
pressing problem was sustenance. The first
year, the settlers drank from the lames
River. succumbing to typhoid. dysentery
and salt poisoning. Once they had dug a
well theywereabletodrink safely. but what
would Ihey eal? Gardening and farming
were fiendishly difficult. Sludies of tree
rings show thaI the Chesapeake was baked
by drought during the first seven years of
the colony. This meant they were depen·
denl on bartering or seizing supplies from
local Indians, whose own slores were de-
pleted. The settlers who died of disease or
starvation had to be replaced by new set·
tiers from England. who arrived once or
twice a year (their ranks increasingly in-
cluded women).
The London Co. expected a return on its
outlay, bUI it was slow in coming. It's not
Ihal the settlers weren't capable of working
hard. One month after they landed, they
realized they needed a log palisade to pro-
~ tect them from Indian arrows. As archaeol-
ogist William M. Kelso points out (in
Jamestown: The Buried Truth), in 19 days and
in a June swelter they cut and split more
than 600 trees weighing 400 to Boo 100. each
and set them in a triangular trench three
'0
lIillll~lInd IIlort, rigill. whl:rra mntehlock musket isfiredjor lIisilors
football fields long and 2'k ft. deep. In 2004
New Line Cinema built a replica of the fort
for its film Th.. New World and did il in
about the same amount of time-with
power tools.
BUI forts cannot be exported. The Rev.
I-Iakluyt had imagined thaI the colonies
"would yield unto us all the commoditiesof
Europe, Africa and Asia." Perhaps Ihe set·
tleTS would discover gold. All they found
were a few semiprecious stones-garnets,
amethysts, quartz crystals. Perhaps Ihey
could manufacture glass. One resupply ship
brought eight German and Polish crafts
men. Most of them ran off to live with the
Indians.
Relations between white and red men
WeTI' the most variable factor in jamestown's
early history. The western Chesapeake was
ruled by Wahunsonacock, chief of the
Powhatan. He WiiS an expansionist. no less
than the English, having brought 30 local
tribes under his sway, an empire of 15,000
people. In December 1607, Smith described
his royal state: MHe sat covered with a great
robe, made of raccOOn skins, and all the tails
hanging by,~ flanked by "two rows of men,
and behind them as many women, with all
their heads and shoulders painted red.~The
settlers hoped 10 make the chief a tributary to
James I; he hoped to make them aJJies of his.
Somelimestheyfought;sometimestheytrad-
ed. Wahunsonacock wanted the copper the
settlers offered in exchange for food, and he
very much wanted their swords and
firearms.
Bul when the Indians refused to trade for
food. the colonists died horribly. The win-
--'-
ler of 1609 became the "starving time.~ The
coloniSIS ale horses, dogs, cats, vermin, even
(it was said) corpses. In June [610 Ihe sur·
vivorsstaggeredontotheirshipsandsailed
into the bay, eilher looking for help or in
tending to sOlil home. Help came with the
arrival ofthreeships from England and new
settlers. The shattered colony was put un-
der strict martial law. The penalties for run-
ning away included shooting, hanging,
burning and being broken on the wheel.
Militarydisciplinewasastopgap;serious
reform, with long·reaching consequences,
wasalrcady underway. The London Co. had
reorganized itself as the Virginia Co. of
london in t609, and over the next dozen
years settlers and hackers alike realized the
colony could nol be run as an overseas min·
ing company or an armed camp. Success
would depend on large numbers of people
and the steady production of exporlable
goods.Thalrneanltheincentivesforlivingin
/amestov.'O had to be modified.
One prophetic idea was to recruil reli-
gious outcasts-Englishmen who longed 10
put an ocean between them and the estab·
lished Anglican Church. Some radical Protes-
\.ants, known as Dissenters. had already fled
to Holland. The Virginia Co. lured some
Dissenters over and opened negotiations
ith others. One boatload of Pilgrims, blown
lmrth.landed in Plymouth, Mass., in 1620.
Religious pluralism in British North America
would suffer many backlracks and false
stans (Virginia would develop its own
Anglican establishment as time passed). but
the first step was laken in jamestown.
jamestown also was the first place to find
 A burled put Al the re.aellted PowhattllllJiIlage in the 'ameslown Slulem<!lll, a historiml inlerpriler, sillinq.lejt, sharpens a deer lOt' bone into afishhook.
The burialgrolmd, right, is at Hisloric lameslowne, wherran archaeological dig turned lip Ihe siteoflam~ Fort. long thought 10 /Ie undenuater
Jamestown spawned
four centuries of
myth, a magical
Shakespeare play
and a Peggy Lee lyric
a cash cow and an economic system for ex-
ploiting it. The Powhatan smoked a crude
indigenous species of tobacco. But in r6r 2.
John Rolfe imJXlrted seeds of NicOlinna
labacurn. the Spanish-American weed that
was already a craze in England. By 1620 the
colony had shipped almost 50,000 lbs. home.
Fifty years later, Virginia and Maryland
would ship r5 million Ibs. Tobacco and food-
stuffs were grown on privately owned farms.
Beginning in r6r8, old settlers were offered
100 acres of land, and newcomers who paid
their way were given 50 acres. plus 50 more
for every additional person they brought.
Many of those additional people were in-
dentured servants who. in return for their
transatlantic passage, bound themselves to
labor for seven years. [n 16r9 the Whitt'Lioll,
a privateer, brought a new laborsource-~ 20
and odd negroes~ from Angola. Our original
sin was not very original-Spain and Portu-
gal had already brought 200.000 African
slaves to the Americas-and the colony was
slow 10 exploit the practice. Slaves did not
outnumber indentuTl'ti servants in Virginia
until the r67os.0nceacquired, however. the
habit of bondage would prove addicting-
economic and social nicotine.
But the need to keep these newly
successful tobacco growers in line led to
1---
TIME MaY7.~OO7
jamestown's most far-reaching innovation,
representative government. In 1618 the
Virginia Co. created a general assembly to ad·
vise the Governor-including "burgesses,~
or representatives, elected by property
owners---on the theory that ~every man will
more willingly obey laws to which he has
yielded hisconsenl.~The general assembly
first met for five days in the summer of 1619.
It discussed Indian relations. church atten-
dance, gambling. drunkenness and the price
of tobacco. It sounds like the Iowa caucuses:
war and peace, social issues, bread and but·
ter. From this seed would grow the House
of Burgesses. the elective house ofVirginia's
colonial legislature and the political acade-
my of George Washington and Thomas
Jefferson. In their rough-and-ready way, the
Jamestown settlers had planted the seeds of
a dynamic system, democratic capitalism,
along with an institution that would per-
vert it, chattel slavery, and a force that would
supply the cure. the goal of liberty.
As the colony flourished. its Powhatan
neighbors became alarmed. Trading posts
were one thing, permanent farms another.
On March 22, 1622, the new leader of the
Powhatan, Opechancanough, launched
dawn raids on 28 plantations and settle·
ments along the James River, killing 347
colonists. a quarter of the tot.il.l population.
lamest own itself escaped. warned by an
Indian boy who h.il.d converted to Chris-
tianity. "Besides them they killed.~ a sur·
vivor lamented, "they burst the heart of all
the rest." Dispirited and disorganized, hun-
dreds more colonists died the following
winter, the second "starving time."
----"-------
The attack was a brilliant tactical stroke,
but it sealed the fate of the attackers. The
survivors responded with all-out war. In
July 1624, some 800 Indian warriors risked
a two-<lay battle with 60 armored and well-
armed colonists and lost. Twenty years later,
Opechancanough, nearly a century old,
was captured and shot in the back in a
Jamestown jail. This too set a pattern: of
conflict and expulsion, which lasted until
the last Indians were beaten and sellied on
reservations in the late r9th cenrury.
Back home, the Virginia Co. sputtered
in wrath at the imprudence of the colonists
in allowing themselves to be killed. A royal
commission found the colony to be ~weak
and miserable.~ and the company'schaner
was revoked in 1624. From then on. its Gov-
ernors would be appointed by the King.
Jamestown left a record of spite, want
and death, tosay nothing of the long·range
problems. from racism to lung cancer, of
which lhecolonistswere unaware. Yet they
survived. Key aspects of the Jamestown
template-chiefly the lures of religious lib·
erty, private ownershir d a measure of
self·rule-guaranteed .nal British North
America would be populous enough 10
withstand challenges from France and
Holland and, finally, the puwer grabs of the
mother country.
Thesettlers came with ideas they had to
junk. Some of their brightest hopes were
false.Thcyworkedhardandgototherpeople
to do their work for them. They were foolish.
fierce and surprisingly stubborn. When one
thing failed, they tried another. We are their
descendants. _
51
,AM£STOWN I INOIANS

The Other Side. 3tOry rpr-o But five years after the selllers arrived,
the weaknesses of the Powhatan started
to show. For one thing, afler 1610, Chief
I'owh.atdn began to feel his age. He became
less decisive and more wishful for pcoace in
nvprDOWE~rE!(l his last yeaTS (he died in 1618), Meanwhile,
the English population advantage back
o home began to take cffect.after 1610, when
.a reorganized Jamestown colony with beller
BY HELEN C. ROUNTREE supply lines began to establish s.atc.llite set-
tlementsun Powhatan farmland. Thesquat-
teTS, as the l'owh.a1an saw them, became so
numerous that they could not be repelled.
TIlE VIEW OF THE PEOPlE since learned to drink springwater rather Even .all-out war, which raged twice,did not
who met the ships was very than river water to stay healthy. The new· stanch the flow of invaders.
different from that of the comers didn't look for sprinb'S and didn't The expansion of English settlements
newcomers aboard them- bother to dig a well until early in 1609 and produced yet another disadvantage for the
and that of most historical instead drank James River water, which Powhatan: more cleared land, which helped
writings since. The native was both brackish and polluted, Most im the English weaponry come into it~ own,
people (collectively called portant, in the colony's early years, which The introduction of snaphance guns in the
A Powhatan the Powhatan) did not write were especially dry, the Powh.atan knew I 62OS, eliminating the need for keeping sep--
Indian
it because their society was how to live directly off the land and wa- .arate matches alight. consolidated th.at ad-
nonliterate, but it can be reconstructed from terways as e"pert foragers. vantage. By then, of course, Powhat.an men
their actions. recorded by the English. The The Powhatan had multiple military ad· were taking and using any guns Iheycould
tilsk is not an easy one, for lay hands on, but it was too l.ate.
the new arrivals had blink As the Powhalan gradually became
ers on. The "Strangers,M as confined to their homeland, their attitude
the Powhaliln called them, loward land began to work against them.
assumed that their lies
about being mere visilors
driven into Chesapeake For every shot an
Bay by the Spanish were
taken seriously by credu- Englishman took, an
lous native people lacking Indian could issue five
experience with Euro-
peans. That belief led .Ill of arrows with accuracy
them, including the usu- Traditionally famlland was Mowned~ only
ally canny John Smith, to while it was being worked. Otherwise, like
undereslimate the people the forest and waterways. it was ~pubJicM
they intended to colonize. land, on which any family could forage. In
Most long-held his their world, wilh its relatively small popu-
toric narratives h,lYe the lations, there was always more land to move
Jamestown colony threat- to. That ceased to be the case when enough
ening the Powhatan from aliens h.adsettled in,.aliens who insisted that
the outset, mdking them they owned Utheir~ land forever and that no
unremittingly hostile in one could trespass on it. It was not until late
turn, but that was not in the 17th century, when they h.ad lost most
the case. The Powhatan oftheirterritory, that the Powhatan reJlized
hoped to make the Strang· they would have to cling '1ermanf'ntly to
ers into allies, and even what remained.
absorb them, not realiz· The Powhatan were n ver obliler.ated.
ing until too late that the however. Norwerl' theypuslu:d intoMpray·
English intended to do Un8ettline: herttage Chi,tSteplk'1l Adkins oftht Chi.-kahominy rribf, ing towns~ or "removed~ westward. Board-
the same to them. Chief ontofright suroiuin9 Virginia tribes, all still sukingftdera/ rtC09nitirm ing schools to force Indian children to
Powhatan's people knew assimilate were few in Virginia_ Instead,
they had numerous advantages over·the vantages over their guests too. European the ne.ar1y landless people rt'luctantly
foreigners in the first few years after 1607. fireanns had scriousdrawbacks in anything adopted English ways from their neighbors
First and foremost, the native people out other thdn open-field fighting. Muskets tn the 18th century and went right on sur-
numbered them by more than 500 to I in were so heavy that they had to be set on.a viving in their homeland. They are still
Ihe colony's nrst two years. Not until the tripod before they were aimed. Guns of all wilh us today: two reservations, plus five
1620S would the numbers be even. Part of sizes, including pistols, were muzzle-loaded, nonreservation tribes. _
this imbalance was due to the fact that which meantth.at forevery shot an English·
there were local bugs, now unidentifiable, man took, a Powhatan man could loose off Roun/rtl', Illlll/llhropologisl, is t/lflluthoro!
10 which the local people had immunity five arrows with deadly accuracy while dan- Pocahontas, Powhatan, Opechancanough:
but Europeans did nol. The locals had long ing from tree to tree for cover. Three Indian Lives Changed by Jamesto....-n
-- TIME MaY7,lOO7
 JAMESTOWN I THE SITE

Where It All Began.

BY LON TWEETElI
AND JACKSON DYUIAJI

--- .
__

.._ _ ' ,
..-

~ _ l o t ' ~
\"-
(.-01 ....- . _ _

-.-
_(_, - - . \...-. __
~ __

--.,-_ __
-.....,. _ _ ...
~_lf_· '~ ...
\--~-,...-
·.......
J"MF:STOW" Sl.IolIERV

The Root of the Problem. similarity to other emerging slave regimes?

One reason was the distinctive demo-
graphic pattern that began to take shape by
the last quarter of the I]th century. Virginia

con rad:t:tilon a mocr cy and the other Southern states were Ihe only
large-scale slave regimes in which white set·

mitt to av ry tiers. committed to the creation of a new s0-

BY ORLANDO PATTERSON
ESS l"HAN A DOH:" nAilS AFTER TilE
and laws changed. By [662 the children of
cial order, remained in the majority and thus
had no incentive tocreate alliances wlth free
blacksor mixed populations. The second rea-
son is offered by Yale historian Edmund
Morgan in his celebrated study of Virginia:
the elite, fearful of an insurrectionary union
of white servants and slaves. actively pro·

L founding of Jilmestown, about 20 all slave women weTC declared slaves in per-
Africans from what is now Angola petuity. Fiveyears later, Christianity ceased to
were sold to settlers of the fledgling colony. be an obstacle to enslavement, and by 1669 a
moted racism and a racially exclusive popu-
lardemocracy asa way ofdividing and ruling
black and white workers. By glorifying
They found themselves in a raw, chaotic mastereould legitimately kill hisslave while whiteness and restricting the electorate to
frontier society in which the English set· inflicting punishment. Allhesame time, the whites, a bond of racial solidarity emerged
tIers wcre still trying to figure Out the best distinction between slave status and inden- between all classes of whites predicated on
way 10 survive and lurn a profit. tured servitude was more sharply defined. the permanent exclusion of blacks.
In this unsettled, formative phase, the But there were two peculiar features of So emerged one of the great contradic·
Afric'InS worked side by side with white Jamestown's, and more broadly Virginia's. tions in the growth of American democracy.
indentured servants whose physical hard· transition to a fully functioning slave socie- The region with the most vibrant democracy,
ships and treatment were large- and the largest electorate, was deeply com·
ly similar to their own. Too milled to large-scale slavery and the strong
much has been made ofthe fact conviction that there was no inconsistency
that manumission. the fonnal bet\...een liberty and slav("ry. For black Am·
emancipation from slavery, was ericans the consequences were tragic and
open to the most resourceful of lasting. Jamestown'screation instilled in the
them, thai a few of the manu-
mitted prospered and that
blacks and laboring whites in·
teracted on intimate terms. This
It became cheaper
was typical of nearly all new to buy African
multiethnic settlements in the slaves than white
Americas. The colony's elite
remained committed to in- indentured servants
dentured white servitude as broader culture the belief that African
the backbone of Ihe labor Americans, even though they were among
force until at least the middle the earliest arrivals, did not belong to the
of the 17th century because in· body politic and were to be permanently
dentures were cheaper than excluded from all basic rights ofcitizenShip.
African slaves. And since the The great achievement of the civil rights
elite viewed their indentured revolution was the dismantling ofwhat the
servants as lazy ~salvages~­ inheritors of Jamestown had instituted.
the very scum ofEnglishsock Today a black woman fills one of lhe most I
ty not above cannibalism powerful political offices after Ihe presid",ncy.
during periods of need and the Elleluded An f8j7 woodCllf ofa shackkd sIalIC. The Virginia e7ite. and a black man holds serious promise
women little better than pros- fearing rebellion, promot~d racism 10 diL>ide thr laboring dll5ses of becoming the presidential candidate of '
titutes-it is hardly surprising the Democratic Party. Whatever the persist· •
Ihat no one was especially bothered by the ing problems ofblack Americans-many of
occasional mixed unions. which, like a fragile family life and the lack
By the t66os, Ihe laborequation changed: of inheritance. also originated in slavery-it
increased supplies made it cheaper to-buy is now incontestable that they belong to
African slaves than white indentures, and America asAmerica belongs to them. In this.
the former were also considered less rebel· America stands far abow all other multi
hous. The tum toward black slavery did not ethnic Western nations.. Nonetheless, it can-
reduce the inflow of white immigrants. as not, and should never, be forgotten that the
happened in the sugar islands. Instead. a racial tragedy that began in Jamestown took
large white population developed of small more than 350 years 10 overcome. _
and even midsize farmers who relied on their
own or nonslave white labor. As the black PrIltinon is a sociology professor at Harvard
population grew and increasingly became University and alfthorof Slavery and Social
the labor force ofelite whites, both attitudes Death: A Comparative Study
58 TIME MaY7,lOO7
 JAMESTOWN I JOHN SMITH

all with a sanctimonious air and little or no a bat, stole his clothes, stuffed the corpse in
Captain regard for decorum. His name was john a haystack and made off atop the dead
Smith. Turk's horse, finding his way back to

John Smith. In time he would save the expedition Europe along the ancient Silk Road.
from extinction. First, though. he would be Smith was not, in other words, a man
imprisoned by his fellow adventurers, sen- much given to self·doubt by the time he
e tenced twice to hang, and spared from ritu headed for America. At 27, he was ready to
al Algonquian execution by an enchanting put the lessons of hard experience to good
woodlands princess whose memory would use and had little respect for authority he
Y,a haunt him the rest of his life. deemed inept or unearned. His open con-
Tough, romantic and arrogant, Smith tempt for those he called "our ignorant

n"aggart was the original American rebel. which is transporters" landed Smith in the brig, or
much of the reason he looms so large in some such warren of restraint, where he
both the making of American mythology spent one of the most historic voyages in
d a rebel and the making of American history. No history as the first inmate of record in
one can quite agree on what to make of English America.
him. "Unblushingly Machiavellian,~wrote Arriving al the Caribbean island of
It a ig his biographer, Philip Barbour. In the best Nevis, ship's carpenters built a gallows to
of light, Smith was the impolitic outlaw hang Smith for insubordination. He was

chop on his with more grit than tact, the archetypical spared by the group'scommander,Captain
don't·tread-on·me misfit without whom Christopher Newport, a career privateer
the fragile experiment at jamestown who had lost anarm pirating booty on the
ho der. would have collapsed within months. Spanish Main and reckoned the colonists
What historians can agree on is that he would need every fighting man they had
was a victim of his time: the pivotal oncetheygottoVirginia.Sureenough,two
Y ul English figure in the first sustained Anglo- weeks after they settled at jamestown, 200
American culture clash, the accidental en· Indians attacked. Cannon fire dispersed

n v rave voy who would cross the Atlantic but the war party, butthe skirmish served no·
never bridge the broader divide between tiel.' that the settlers were not welcome on
the two very different civilizations on op· the rich riverside tracts Native Americans
e it posite shores.
Self·taught in swordsmanship, hand-to- birth of Christ.
hand combat and making bombs from clay
first roamed some t 3.000 years before the

Smith earned a reputation both fur

"
hi pots, gunpowder and tar, Smith foughtasa bringing home the groceries and brook-
young mercenary in wars across France, the ing no nonSense from settlers who
Netherlands and southeast Europe to the wouldn'l pun their weight or who put
BY BOB DEANS
edge of the Ottoman Empire. Captured and self-interest above the colony's needs. He
sold into slavery, he wound up at a remote made an enemy or two along the way. As
BlackSeamilitaryoutpost,whereaTurkish the military man who understood the

O
N THE WAY TO A.l.IF.RICA,
aboardoneofthreeshipsthat officer shaved Smith's head and riveted an terrain and was the least likely to be
would land at lamestown, iron ring around his neck. "A dog could missed ifhe didn't return, Smith was put
one passenger seemed to hardly have lived to endure" the routine in charge of seeking local tribes willing
grate on the rest like a splin- beatings and starvation rations that fol- to swap corn. fish and game for English
tered oar. He was astocky,sawed·offstubof lowed, Smith wrote in his colorful and epic copper and glass beads. When one hard
a man; a seasoned war fighter with a autobiography. pressed tribe balked at the corn-for-copper
valiant past he seldom tired of highlight- AsSmith tells it, he was tending a grain trade, Smith ordered his men to rake the
ing; an unconscionable braggart of mod- field alone one day, when his master village with shot and put the odd lodge
est means who resented the blue bloods stopped by unescorted to dish out his cus- to the torch. Terrified natives opened their
among the group; a bigmouthed know-il_"_1_O_ffi_'_'Y,--'b_"_'_,_,S_ffi_;I_h_=_'_h_'_d_h_;'c'_k_"_ll_w_H_h_"gc,,_n_'--,ry to the armed trespassers, know-
61
'AMESTOWtl I JOHtI SMITH
ing that meant some of their own people
would likely starve come winter. Return·
ing from one such mission of foraging
and gunboat diplomacy. Smith found
disgruntled settlers trying to comman
deer a ship back to london. Ill" opened
cannon and musket fire on the would-be
deserters, who quickly reassessed and
came ashore.
The great contest of Smith's life, though,
was nol waged ,lgainst Turkish tyrants or
English riv,lls, Smith met his m,ltch in a
smoke-fillerllodge ofb,lrk and skins, when
he was captured and made to stand trial be·
fore Ihe most powerful man in Virginia,an
aging Algonquian chief the English knew
as l'owhatan. He wore a raccoon cloak,long
strings of pearls and was attended by
women, warriors, shamans and priests.
Smith wrote, recalling that Powhatan pro-
jected "such d grave and majestical counte·
nance as drew me into admiration to see
such state in a nilked silvdge."
Smith believed he had made an impres·
sion as well, cunningly leading his cilptors
to believe he possessed magical powers by
showing off his compaSS-How does the
needle move inside the rock?-dnd, of
course, firing off gunpowder. which the
natives took from him and vowed to plant
the following spring so they too might reap
a harvest of powdered fury.
Smith's charms. though, quickly wore
thin, After making a show of his wealth
by feasting Smith with Chesapeake oys-
ters, boiled turkey and baked cornbread,
Powhatan got to the point: What the heck
was Smith doing on the big man's turf,and
how fast would he get out? Why, Smith
baldly lied, he and his mates had merely
be!'n chased upriver by the wicked Spanish
and would soon be gone. Powhatan, who
knew better, signaled for a band of sine....'Y
w,lrriors to press Smith's head upon an al-
tar of stone and prepare to beat out his
brains with clubs. But Powhatan'S daugh·
ter Pocahontds intervened (see following
slory), and the chief embraced Smith as one
of his own, giving him the honorary tribal
name of Nantaquoud. He even offered
Smith some nearby land. Smith instead re-
turned to Jamestown, where his adver·
sarieschargeJ him with negligence in the
death of two of his men killed by Indians.
Smith was sentenced, again, to be hanged.
Hours before he was to swing, Newport'
Lucky guy. Smith
was set to hang
twice and was saved
both times by the
same man
62
With Pocahontas AlII, sht may halJ(' Slllltd him as pari 0/11 rile o/inililllioll oroul o!gclluine rOllcem
arrived up the lames River with fresh sct-
tiers and supplies, intervening once more
to spare Smith from the noose.
Outlasting his detraclors mor~ than win-
ning them over, Smith was elected presi-
dent of Ihe fledgling colony in September
1608. Chiefexecutive, military commander
and political leader of British America.
Smith,at 28, had found a place at last where
a man might thrive on bravado and wit. No
title, no patron, no ruff-throated pretensions
of nobility were required in Smith's Vir-
ginia, just an iron will to prevail-and a
hornful of powder and shot.
Suddenly iL wasn't only the Indians who
had to deal with Smith, but also the Virginia
Co. investors who funded lamestown and
were impertinent enough to expect arc·
turn. Forg~t it, Smith wrote his london
underwriters. There was no sense digging
for gold where nalure had left none, he
scoffed, nor would the rock-strewn James
River ever guide their wind·driven square·
riggers on some long·dreamed-ofshortcut to
China. Disenchanted investors, he con
cluded, were free 10 join him in Jamestown.
where their udds uf surviving were about
I in4.
Thesealing wax on that l.'pisllewasstill
hardening when Smith assembled his fel-
low colonists for,l reading of the proverbial
rial act. "The greater part must be more
industrious or starve,~ Smith denecd. ~He
that will not work, shall not eat Not too
H
surprisingly, productivity soared. Anglo-
American relations played to a draw. Strains
were briefly managed, tensions largely con·
tained. What followed, though, was a long
and tortuous series of missed opportuni·
ties, conflict and outright betrayal that set
Smith and Powhatdn on a collision course.
When the old chief got word that Smith
had sacked yet another village and made off
with half its provisions on the eve ofa harsh
winter, he summoned the white man to his
lodge and offered to trade in peace.
Smith rejected it, falling back instead on
insults and threats. "For your riches we have
no use," Smith shrugged. And if Powhatan
meant to challenge the colonists' superior
firepower, bring it on, Smith Idunted, for
"in such wars consist ourchiefest pleasure,H
There ended the promise of friendship
for Chief Powhatan and Captain lohn
Smith, a tragic precursor to the bloodshed
between Native Americans and Europeans
that was to repeat itself for centuries to
come. But for all his flaws and hidebound
ways, Smith avoided all·out war with the
narives during his tenure, believing, for the
most part, that conflict could be managed
with the right mix of bully and bluff.
Smith was the only one, too, in James-
town's first fragile years, with the ability to
impose order and direction upon the bold
but uneven and quarrelsome crowd that
journeyed in leaking wooden boats to the
far side of the world to claw out an English
beachhead. "His mixture of great white
father and avenging god superbly achieved
what he wanted-a fuod supply: wrote
Barbour. With the colony's survival hang·
ing in the balance, ~other questions were
academic.~ _
A national correspolldclltforCox Net1))7JllptrS,
Dealls is aUlharofThe River Where America
Began: A loumey Along the lames
TIME MaYl.200]
 ."I'I'/£STO ..... ". I .. OC .... OlfT"S
Mad About You. wha if they
ocah ntas nd
o n ml were fascinated with
r, and it saved the colony
BY BOB DEANS
The captlvB pfIncBSll Thru i/Il1strilriOns cfPo<ahonteu, but only theunttrone WilS dom:from lift
IT WAS TII£ FIRST GREAT AMERICA1Ii LOVI;
story. Or was it?
Neither John Smith nor Pocahontas
(vcr claimed to be an item. There's not a
shred of evidence to affirm they were. But
the reill story of their relationship is more
interesting thiln what the rich canon of
American romance literature,oreven HoI·
lywood, has made of it. Pocahontas and
Smith shared a deep friendship based, at a
minimum, on mutual fascination. admi
ration and respect. Their relationship al·
most certainly saved Jamestown, opening
the way to British empire in America.
And their intimacy~platonic or other·
wise-has mirrored for the ages the perilous
courtship between the Native Americans
and the early European colonists, a forced
marriage of competing cultures and con·
flicting interests that, like so many other im·
passioned yet ultimately tragic affairs, began
with great promise only to end in heartbreak.
Princess Matoaka-she was also called
Amonute-was born around 1596. Daughter
of Chief Powhatan, she had to be a bit of a
spitfire to get Dad's attention. Powhatan
had a hundred "wives" or, more accurately,
women who bore him children. This child
was special. I[e nicknamed her Pocahontas,
or little capricious one, a tribute to her play·
ful nature. She was also striking: She
"much exceedeth any of the rest of his
[Powhatan'sl people,~wroteSmith, "not on·
ly for feature, countenance and propor·
tion ... but for wit and spirit, the only
Nonpareil of his country."
Those lines comprise the most fawning
reference to a female in the voluminouscol-
lection of Smith's lifetime of writings. He
had good reason to find her extraordinary.
64
0
For one thing, she silv(d him from execu-
tion by her father. Som( historians doubt
that-Smith is the only historical sourCe
for the tale-but the story has never been
credibly disputed. What is less well known
is that she saved the Englishman a second
time, risking her life 10 sneak through a
darkened forest alone to warn Smith of
imminent ambush, and that she continued
to find ways to help the Jamestown settlers.
When a winter fire ravaged their colony in
1608, Pocahonlas paid a series of calls, .11"
companied by braves bearing beaver meat,
venison and olher delicacies. And it was
Pocahontaswhowassentto Jamestown one
year 10 negotiate the release of half a dozen
Indian prisoners.
After 2'1, years in Virginia. Smith re-
turned to England, and the settlers
told Pocahontas he was dead. About
14 at the time, her reaction speaks
for itself: she banished all
thought of Ihe settlers, staying
clear of jamestown for Ihe next
four years. The English.though.
weren't finished with her. In the
spring of 16r 3, when Pocahon-
tas was nearing 18, she was
kidnapped by a colonist·
sailor.ller father paid most
of the ransom-a gaggle
of English prisoners.
guns and a boalload
of corn-but the
white men kept the
girl just upriver from
Jamestown. There the
planter John Rolfe, a
prosperous widower,
soon found himself
battling an attraction he deem(d alternate-
lysinful and sublime. In what must be the
most peculiar betrothal request in
American history, Rolfe wrote to Virginia
Governor Thomas Dale. first apologizing
for being in love with the daughter of Ihe
nalive chief, then begging for p(rmission
to marry her. Theirs was the first recorded
marriage of an Englishman and a Native
American woman. and it ushered in a period
of relative peace.
Two years later, the Anglo-American
couple and theiryoung son Thomas visited
London on a public relations scheme
hatched by the Virginia Co. Its heavily in-
debted investors hoped the exotic New
World priocess would help them drum up
desperately needed capital to keep their flag-
ging American venture alloat.
No one followed her visit with greater
interest, it seemed, than the still influential
but greatly diminished John Smith. He
wrote a leiter to King James' wife. Queen
Anne. urging her to receive Pocahontas in a
manner befitting her status as Algonquian
royalty. Uncomfortable months passed be-
fore Smith summoned the courage to call
on Pocahontas. What followed was a heat·
ed, if not altogether tender, scene
Pocahontas turned her back on Smith, re-
fusing for more than two hours to speak.
When at last she did, she gave him a
piece of her mind. II'I ling Smith he
had betrayed her people and up-
braiding him for staying gone for
so many years and neversending
a word. Weeks later, drifting
down the Thames aboard a ship
bound for Jamestown, Poca-
hontas fell ill. She died in
Gravesend 111 March 16t7.
Smith lived another 14 years,
unwed to his dying day. Both
were buried in England,
separately, and a world
away from Ihe one true
love they indisputably
shared, a place the English
called America. _
PocahontQ
H""am~was
a tribute toh,r
precocious nUllin
lAMUTOW,", , AIlCHA[OlOOY

Eureka! WilEN ARCHAEOLOGISTS

first slarted digging In
Jamestown in the 19305,
they turned up more:
than half a million .uti-
facts-----hut not a Iran: of
the original fort. In fact,
TooIl 01 tM trade nobody expected to find
A brlUsGrntran- it. Based on a handful of
mlldr alimblr WliS written eyewitnes) ac-
foulld inthrfor1's counts and two maps,
bulwark trmch
the James furt was wide-
ly believed to have been built .11 the west
end of jamestown Island, close 10 the
BY MiCHAEL D. lEMONICK ANO ANDREA OORFMAN
deepwater channel where the colonists pre-
sumably moored their ships. The river had
washed away some 25 acres of thaI part of
Ihe island long ago, however, and most ar
chaeologists figured the site of the fort had
ended upon the river bottom.
William Kelso disagreed. Unhkto his col-
leagues, Kelso, a specialist in colonial
American archaeology who began working
for the Association for the Preservation of
Virginia Antiquities in T993, was convinced
that the fort lay instead somewhere close
to the brick church tower built in r690, the
only sl:rviving structure from the colony's
first century. Soon April 4, T994. he put his
shovel in the ground, and less than an hour
later turned up fragments of early 17th
century ceramics. Over the next few
months, Kelso and a team ofvolunteers un-
covered a series of circular stains in the
soil-the marks of logs that had once stood
upright but had long since rotted away.
Although it took him another TO yearsof
slow, patient work, Kelso eventually man-
aged to map out the lriangleshape of the forI
along with the foundations of at least five
buildings, several wells and a burial ground.
His team has also dug up more than a million
artifacts, about t'vice the number found over
the previous half-century, including arms
and anner, poUery, clay pipes, clothing and
shoes, iron tools,jcwdry,animal bonl'S, trdde
beads, sheets of copper and hundreds of
stone points. Individually, these objectsSl't':m
trivial. Taken together, however, they're
yidding an extraordinary picture ofwho the
colonists were and how they Iived-some-
thing contemporaneous written accounts
couldn't come close to doing.
Perhaps the most unexpected discovery
is evidence Ihat Indians, whom the settlers
assumed would be unifomlly hostile,actu·
ally lived in the fort for some period of time.
Trash pits, for example, yielded fragments
of an Indian reed mat dS well as shell beads
favored by the Indians and the type ofstone
1001 that they would have used to drill
Ihem. The Indian artifacts were found
mixed in with English ones in an undis
turbed layer of soil and in greater concen·
trations than have ever been found in
Virginia Indian villages. That, and the fact
that the Indians bothered to carry tools like
the stone drills into the fort, has led archae·
ologists to think the Indians spent signifi·
cant amounts of time there. ~II must have
been a very close relationship." says Kelso.
"No one really talks about that."
Additional evidence of the Indians' pres·
ence inlhe fort comes from olle of the build-
ings Kelso's team excavated. Known as "the
quarter," it was at least 30 fl. long by 18 ft.
wide and appears to have been built using a
mud-and-stud technique that was popular
in Lincolnshire, England. during thc early
17th cent ury.ln one comer of its cellar the ar-
chaeologists found a butchered tunic shell
and pig bones, as well as an Indian cooking
pot with traces of turtle bone inside. Nearby
were a Venetian trade bead, a sheathed dag-
ger and a musketeer's kit bag. As a result.
Kelso sunnises that an Indian woman may
have cooked for the inhabitants.
Kelso's team has also uncovercrl a mod-
est cemetery within the forl. The plot,
which dates to the colony's earliest years,
holds at least 23 individuals: t9 single buri-
COlonial hyglene This als and two double burials(mostlikely peo-
ornar~ si/~rear picker ple who died on the same day). One of the
s~rved doubledury: ir kepr single graves contained the remains ofa boy
teeth and nails dran too with a stone arrowhead in his leg, a broken
collarbone and a jawbone that had neen par-
tially excised due to an abscess. The posi-
tion of the bones, the lack of coffin nails
Barte. The Indians
providedjood in and the abundance of straight pinsscatlered
~xr1langefor items /ike in the graves opened so far indicate that
this English sixpnlCe some of the bodies were interred in Simple
shrouds without coffins.
Another burial ground outside the walls
of the fon, dating from 1610101610, holds
some 80 individuals. From them, forensic
anthropologists at the National Museum of
Natural History ill Washington determined
that the average male inhabitant died at age
l5, with womcn living slightly longer. (At
the time, Kelso notes, life expectancy for
lower<lass residents of London was about
20 years; for the upper class, it was about
Household Ilems
40.) To the scientists' surprise, hardly any
Thrdighas
yielded rhousands of Ihe graves comained infants.
ofctmmics, lik~ But perhaps the most significant discov
this intalr English ery was a lone grave with the remains of a
&rderWart' ceremonial staff inside. Kelso bclieves it is
drinldngjug the resting place ofBanholomew Gosnold.
captain ofthe Godsp;:ed. who died on Aug. 22,
1607, after a "three-week illness_~ DNA tests
on the skeleton have been inconclusive.
The colonists were ill-prepared for life in
Virginia and, at least initially. had no crops to
harvest. So Kelsowas not surprised todig up
the goods they offered the Indians in ex
change for food Among them; Venetian glass
beads (blue ones were preferred), sheet cop-
Native pretence Indians per (a commodity prized by the Powhat.an,
made tllese slolle arrow
who wore pendants and other ornaments ~
poinfS./oundat the site. I.It
least 400 year! ago fashioned from the reddish metal), European i-
coins (useless in Virginia) and metal tools:
(the Indians had ones made only from Slone. i
Slat"••ymbol Only a wood, bone and shell). By the 16600, when i
gentleman would have owned the English had eSlablished a numberof sel- ;
allexpensiw object like fhis t1ements in thearea, the Indians were even is- ~
Chillest·pcrcflain WinelUp sued silver or copper badges that aJlowed i
them safe passage while conducting busi·;
ness with the foreigners.
A comprehensive selection of artifacts i
from Kelso's digs is on display in a $4.9 mil- :
lion facility known as the Archaearium that:
opened at Historic JamestownI' last May. :
His team is now excavating beneath the.
Civil War-era eanhen fort that rises in the ~
middle of James Fort in search of the
colony's earliest church-just in time for.
Jamestown's 400th-birthday celebration. _
67
 UIMESfOWN I VIEWPOINt

The Anniversary Party. n n

BY SANDRA DAY O'CONNOR

how it works, the more likt:ly it is that we of voting is just one way to encourage civic

I
N .\IAY 160], 104 E.'IIGLlSII.\IEN LANOE\) AT
Jamestown, Va., to establish the first suc· will continue to develop the means to live involvement. Along with participation in
Cessful permanent English settlement cooperatively and succ('ssfully in today's community discussions and communicat·
in the New World. This y~ar we com· challengi ng world. ing with local, state and ft:deral officials,
Illemorate the 400th anniversary of their America persevered because passionate, voting is.\I the heart of America's demo-
arrival· an event that changed the wurld. civic·minded citizens undcrSlOod the im· cratic system. Parents who take their chil-
ramestown was the beginning of America's portance of this country's founding tradi- dren to polling precincts when they are
representative government, the rule of law. tions Jnd wt:re willing tu tak.. a stand in yuung help them understand that they have
frce enterprise and what has now become their defense. But these historic lessons are a voice in the democratic process. Voting
one of the most culturally diverse empowers the powerless, equal-
societies on ~arth. izes the powerful and provides a
The founders of Jamestown un voice to those who feel excluded
derwent Sl:vere testing; their sur- from the process of government.
vival was continually at risk. But Over the past 40 years. the
Jamestown endured and gave number of civics courses taught
America ifnot a perfect ~·tart, cer· in our schools has declined sig-
tai nly a legacy of self-reliance suf- nificantly. Classes that once en-
fident to build upon and establish couraged debate on current
a system of citizen participation issues, fostered creative thinking
in government. Jnd rewarded civic involvement
So what can we learn from and public service have given
lamestown?There is of course the way to technical instruction de·
tangible. The research being done signed to prepare students for the
at Historic Jamestowne, including current demands of the wurk·
some breakthrough discoveries in force. While preparJ.tion forem
recent years, is giving us new in· ployment is critical to assuring
sights into exactly what took place students opportunities in a com
so long ago. Since 1994, in fact, ar- pelitive world, it is not sufficienL
chaeologists have uncovered a More emphasis should be placed
vast array of artifacts-ceramics, on civic learning to ensure that
jewelry, tools, coins, furnishings, America's future generations Jrc
food, armur and arms -that have ready to meet this responsibility
illuminated the conditions, trials, not only in lhe workplace but
troubles and ht'ruics uf this colo- also in the polling place.
nial English outpost in the New We must look to the past to
Wurld. Simply .IS a story uf hu· understand beller how we Ix-.
manity in adversity. it is J stun- came the people we are, the ad
ningand instructive tale. Settlllg sail Ou bo<trd II repliw a/Discovery, ollt'o!tllru English sllips versity that had 10 be overcome,
But there is the larger purpuse rhlll aniVt'd al wllar b«Cl»l( lamrsloum in ,Hay /607 the courage of au r forebears, their
at wurk today in this commemo- achievements and, yes, their mis
ration--a purpose that goes to the heart of nut passed on to new generatiuns through takes and failings. We must also make time
how we ~trengthen our democracy in to the gene pool. They must be taught in our to look to the future. Jamestown's 400th
day's world and build for the fuaHe. schools. birthday provides a platform foremphasiz-
Jamestown hassumething tocontribute to Teaching civic respunsibility involves ing the imporlance of ch'ics educalion
that too. This is an ideal opportunity to rec- connecting a child's life to the grealercom- taught in the context of our nation's histo-
ognizt: the importance of promoting civic munity. By speaking out on neighborhood ry. Sustaining our demucrallc republit' re-
learning: teaching our young people about issues and helping to serve the needs of quires that we renew our commilment to
our history and the responsibilitit:s of citi· their community, parents can t~ach their that objective.
l.cnship as wcJl as the special significance of children the impurtance of becoming ac- America's next 400 years depend on it._
the rule of law in a functioning democracy. tive participants in the world they too will
The betler we all understand and appreciate one day serve. Till' n:tirrd Supremr Court Justice is honorary
the genesis of the American republic and Teaching young people the importance chairwoman ofAmerica's 400111 AlllliuersllfY
68 TIME MaY7.10Cl7